Is this because it prevents T-Mobile from monetizing and selling user browsing data?
> The carriers wrote that the feature cuts off networks and servers from accessing “vital network data and metadata and could impact “operator’s ability to efficiently manage telecommunication networks.”
But seriously, it is because it prevents T-Mobile from monetizing you and slowing you down.
It’s completely about monetizing your browsing history.
VPNing everything at scale will impact that monitoring/management. And that will absolutely impact towers, or cause the carriers to throttle users vs apps.
What this prevents is allowing say Youtube to pay TMobile to never throttle their traffic.
The one legitimate argument here is that this prevents traffic shaping based on the destination, which T-Mobile uses to do things like offer unlimited streaming separate from your general data quota.
P ---- CT ---- S
With VPN/whatever:
P ---- CT ---- VE ---- S
P = Phone
CT = Cell Tower
S = Server
VE = VPN endpoint
So given this the cell tower can still determine who is using lots of traffic, they just can snoop on that traffic.
Basically, what everyone wants is for companies like T-Mobile to be a dumb pipe. They invested in spectrum and a network, and they should just lease that network for cost + profit margin. Instead, they want to milk it. They want you to pay more for particular packets. They want the rest of the Internet to pay more for particular packets. They want to inject their own ads into unaffiliated websites. They want to build a marketing profile based on what sites you visit, and send you "offers" based on this. Right now, that is all technically possible, so they'd be defrauding their shareholders if they didn't try. But, we can of course say "no" and route around the damage. Apple is letting their customers say "no", and that means T-Mobile is doomed to irrelevance, and that's a great thing. Infrastructure should be infrastructure.
(Can you imagine what it would be like if other utilities did this kind of shit? Your water would cost less if you were using it to run a Coke-branded soft drink dispenser, but not a Pepsi one. Or, Dell computers could get electricity at a 10% discount, but not Asus ones. It would be unthinkable! But with these big ISPs, it's mandatory.)
I'm guessing the exact legal agreements didn't spell it out like this, but that's how I think of it. Only one company can use this finite resource at once, but just because they bought it doesn't mean there is no limit to what they can do with it.
Can you expand on this? Are you saying that if a business opportunity exists and a company elects not to pursue it that constitutes defrauding shareholders? I would have thought it constituted nothing more than a disagreement over strategy.
Apple notoriously "extorts" developers to be in the app store.
> Basically, what everyone wants is for companies like T-Mobile to be a dumb pipe. They invested in spectrum and a network, and they should just lease that network for cost + profit margin.
I don't think you've considered the alternatives if T-Mobile can no longer monetize traffic:
* Go back to subscribers pay per kb usage
* Eat the costs themselves
* Raise cost of mobile data plans
> Can you imagine what it would be like if other utilities did this kind of shit?
They side step this problem by charging per-use. During peak demand, prices go up. Each customer pays their share. Downside see Texas snowstorm.
They charge $70/month for “unlimited” data which is only 50GB before throttling. I’m pretty sure they can profitably afford to run a network for that much without reselling user data.
This sounds like a clumsy restatement of the urban legend that companies have an obligation to maximize shareholder value. There is in fact no such rule, for the obvious reason that nobody can accurately predict the future and calculate the optimal value.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
In this case, a company like Apple could say that they are choosing to forgo short-term profits from selling out their users’ privacy because they feel that the long-term loyalty will be greater, and anyone arguing otherwise would still have to admit that this approach has been phenomenally profitable.
It's not in line with the net neutrality, but it's useful for the direct parties:
a) a video streaming customer wins because they can do video streaming without touching their data allotment.
b) the video streaming server wins because their customers are able to do more streaming
c) t-mobile wins because they've reduced bandwidth requirements
Competitive streaming services that are not included in the program don't win, but t-mobile made it fairly easy to join. Users who want to stream at 4k or whatever don't win, but they can turn off the bandwidth restrictions and use their data allotment if that's what they want to do.
At my last job, I was involved with a lot of zero-rating deals as the application provider; we never paid for it, and I don't recall ever being asked for payment. Some of the carriers even setup plans without our knowledge or consent or assistance; this didn't usually work great long term, because of misidentified traffic, but it indicates the demand was there without us pushing it.
Only problem is that you would have to be large enough that the ISPs would care if their scores looked bad.
I consider those agreements to be violations of Net Neutrality, since they're inherently not treating all data the same.
That said, iCloud private relay only applies to Safari, so T-Mobile blocking it probably doesn’t have much to do with their variable data caps.
See Facebook's internet.org.
For many people, a cheaper plan with slightly lower quality video is a great tradeoff.
I would agree if they do not make that available to all services. At least at the time they did that for music there was a pretty long list of partners so I’d be most interested in knowing whether they charge money or reject applicants.
That provides some (or a lot) of value I am guessing.
- Time T0: User requests the DNS record for example.com
- Time T0+10ms: DNS returns "example.com. 193 IN A 10.1.2.3"
- Time T0+20ms: User opens a connection to 10.1.2.3 port 443
Chances are pretty good they're looking at example.com, even if you can't examine a single packet.