It's both better and worse than that. The FCC has no problem with "zero rating" or "sponsored data" per se. Instead of paying Netflix $8/mo to stream content

It's both better and worse than that. The FCC has no problem with "zero rating" or "sponsored data" per se. Instead of paying Netflix $8/mo to stream content from their servers to peering network providers, and then paying AT&T a marginal $4/mo to take that data from the peering servers to their towers and eventually to your phone, you could pay Netflix $12/mo and have them pay $4/mo to AT&T on your behalf. Annoying and problematic for sure - you can bet that some sites like fcc.gov, for example, are unlikely to pay AT&T for sponsored data, that this makes it more difficult for upstarts, and that this allows AT&T to offer less general-purpose data and more control over bandwidth. But it could in theory be done fairly. Nonetheless, the clear and present issue is that DirectTV, owned by AT&T, is getting this "sponsored data" class for free. If DirectTV were offered the same deal as Netflix, who were offered the same deal as fcc.gov and news.ycombinator.com, that would be one thing. But they're not. And that's discrimination.