Comments on: Freeness: why the Caribbean ought to be vigilant about zero rating net neutrality

By: nielharper

nielharper — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:27:33 +0000

Hello Michele,

Balancing the two opposing positions is difficult, but not impossible. A couple of thoughts…

1) Regulators have to understand the industries that they are tasked with overseeing, and decide where they are along the continuum of development (particularly around universal access). Hence, they can decide where zero rating as a consumer and developmental benefit begins and ends.

2) Regulators also need to understand where and when zero rating is contributing to market distortions. For example, ISPs could be prohibited from zero rating their own services to the disadvantage of their competitors (e.g. Comcast zero rating its Xfinity App for streaming video, but having Hulu, Netflix and others count towards data usage). Another scenario is where an application provider pays an ISP to zero rate its application, but these revenues are not then passed on to the consumers through innovation, service enhancement, and performance improvements. Moreover, new entrants cannot “pay for play” and this affects competition as well. The final scenario, which might me the most palatable, is zero rating all applications in a certain class and not allowing application providers to “pay for play”. This doesn’t provide any distinct competitive advantage, and allows users to increasingly use and access the Internet for a particular class of applications without it counting against their data cap.

3) Finally, regulators could restrict zero rating to purely developmental applications such as Wikipedia, Google, mobile payments, e-government, m-fisheries, library-based services, etc.

What do you think?

By: Michele Marius

Michele Marius — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 15:32:32 +0000

In reply to nielharper.

Hi Niel,

I fully appreciate what you are saying, and even alluded to it in the article. Offering access for select online platform, can help to promote and expose persons to the Internet, who might not otherwise get that experience.

However, there perhaps also ought to be a recognition of longer term consequences, and thus more informed decision making by our regulators and policy makers.

Question: could we balance two seemingly countervailing positions? Any thoughts?

By: nielharper

nielharper — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 09:03:29 +0000

So here are my thoughts on zero rating… I think that in a mature and competitive market where universal access has pretty much been achieved, zero rating can be seen as picking favorites and using the intelligence in the network to establish competitive advantage. In this context, it can be viewed as a violation of the ‘end-to-end principle’ and a net neutrality issue. Conversely, in an emerging economy with very limited Internet access, low competition and high prices, zero rating can actually be a good thing and serve as an enabler of ICT-based development. For example, it allows people to access the Internet (albeit with limitations to Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.), broadens the availability of online education resources, and increases the individual’s aptitude for using and benefiting from the Internet. Hope this makes sense.