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posted by martyb on Monday January 16 2017, @08:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-free-isn't dept.

In his final days as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler has accused AT&T and Verizon Wireless of violating net neutrality rules with "zero-rating" policies:

Wheeler described his views in a letter to US senators who had expressed concern about the data cap exemptions, or "zero-rating." FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau staff today also issued a report concluding that AT&T and Verizon zero-rating programs are unfair to competitors. Both Wheeler's letter and the staff report can be read in full here.

The main issue is that AT&T and Verizon allow their own video services (DirecTV and Go90, respectively) to stream on their mobile networks without counting against customers' data caps, while charging other video providers for the same data cap exemptions. The FCC also examined T-Mobile USA's zero-rating program but found that it poses no competitive harms because T-Mobile offers data cap exemptions to third parties free of charge. T-Mobile also "provides little streaming video programming of its own," giving it less incentive to disadvantage video companies that need to use the T-Mobile network, the FCC said.

Also at TechCrunch, Washington Post, CNET, and The Hill.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @11:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @11:41AM (#454345)

    I want to walk into a store and pay cash to buy a little red box, and I want that little red box to broadcast a wifi signal, and I want the wifi signal to give me free internet access, and I don't want to pay any additional fees after I already paid for the little red box. And I want all this to have already happened, and I want to post this comment using a little red box that says Verizon 4G LTE.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @11:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @11:43AM (#454347)

    Well that was easy.

    Data caps. I don't even.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @12:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @12:55PM (#454357)

      I don't even.

      You do odd, then?

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @12:59PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @12:59PM (#454358)

        Yes, 53 is an odd numbered port.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @01:04PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @01:04PM (#454360)

          Whoa whoa whoa, are you saying if I put an SSH server on port 53, I can get free internet?

          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @04:07PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @04:07PM (#454398)

            yes, you can expand your domain this way very effectively!

            At various schools that I help with the IT services/support at, we block DNS lookups externally from end user segments and further only allow specific static hosts to do DNS lookups. This forces our guests (such as students) to use our local DNS services for their unsanctioned web surfing when they should be studying.

            The sound we heard when we first enabled this (or disabled, depending on your frame of reference) could be heard around the world. I felt a disturbance in the force and I was not even there that day. It was like all of the PCs in the library stopped playing flash games all of a sudden (since they were being accessed on blocked sites that people were bypassing by clever workarounds that still relied on getting to the proper DNS name...)

            And no student complained. I guess they knew better than to accuse someone of making it so they couldn't play games they already knew they were not supposed to be playing.

            Of course, any student smart enough to get a red box that has internet access and share it with friends is going to bypass local LAN efforts to keep things under control, but at least they won't be on the school's network when they do that. The honor system for policing this sort of stuff ends around where something like this starts.

            But blocking dns lookups internally is a great way to prevent ssh tunnels and other tunnels within port 53 from being used. People told me that students would never be smart enough to figure that out because the adults that don't work in IT said they didn't understand it, so the kids wouldn't either. Uh-huh. Kids are ingenius and creative and share discoveries rapidly, even if they do not understand how it works, they certainly know how to install free software that enables a feature they want.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @01:16AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @01:16AM (#454645)

              That's the idea. Restrict your network until no one wants to use it. The mobile carriers will love you. Some of those kids who are stealing free data today with their burner boxes might grow up and get jobs and pay for data plans. Eventually your stupid school won't have a network anymore and everybody pretending to work in IT will be fired.