LA Times: Why T-Mobile’s new ‘free’ data plan is bad for the Internet—and worse for you

Why T-Mobile's new "free" data plan is a fundamental threat to the open Internet.

Article by Michael Hiltzik for LA Times

T-Mobile's chic and brash CEO, John Legere, seems to have persuaded the world at large that his company's new Binge On program is an unalloyed boon to the consumer and a thumb to the eyes of T-Mobile's rivals.

The feature, which exempts the video streams of numerous leading video services from usage caps, certainly sounds great. It's not. It's a fundamental threat to the open Internet, and it's sure to come back and bite consumers where it hurts.

Zero-rating is pernicious; it's dangerous; it's malignant.- Network neutrality expert Susan Crawford

Here's network expert Susan Crawford of Harvard Law School on the concept of "zero-rating," the favoring of specific content providers with exemptions from consumer data limits:

"Zero-rating is pernicious; it's dangerous; it's malignant," she wrote earlier this year. "We should outlaw it. Immediately. Unless it's stopped, it's not going to go away."

Network neutrality advocates Public Knowledge also sounded the alarm. "Turning the mobile Internet into a carrier-controlled walled garden is ultimately a bad idea for consumers, for all online services (even those included in T-Mobile’s zero-rating today), and for the wireless industry as a whole," said John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney, in a prepared statement. 

- Read more at LA Times