> Well if you kept reading I spell that out: > Zero rating lets ISPs allow usages that would otherwise turn people away from data completely, while still charg

> Well if you kept reading I spell that out: > Zero rating lets ISPs allow usages that would otherwise turn people away from data completely, while still charging from uses that are incidental. You'll be more likely to use your phone's data if you also have it on while in the car to stream music, the sum for the ISP is less money per MB on average, but more MBs in total. > Again. The sum for the ISP is less money per MB on average, but more MBs in total. I still don't see how zero rating is required to enable that. How would the same amount of data, but as a data cap instead of zero rating, not enable the same use cases, and also lead to less money per MB on average, but more MBs total? > Now you also need to also actually know how zero rating is being used, they give you unlimited to those services, but they're allowed to limit the quality of service. They're allowed to form partnerships with the zero rated services. They're allowed to use their own services. These are all factors that add up to either saving cost or generating additional revenue over normal data usage. So ... how is zero rating required to enable lower quality services that conserve bandwidth? And if you limit the quality of some services, then transporting a gigabyte sent by that service saves costs vs. transporting a gigabyte from a different service? > It's not relevant because it doesn't support your point of view... No, it's not relevant because it does not support discrimination based on service, it only supports discrimination based on bandwidth used. > The peak bandwidth and total bandwidth needed to let people consume the internet increases if the media the internet is composed of requires... more peak bandwidth and total bandwidth. > You could read 1990s style HTML and ultra compressed low res JPEG for a year and not use as much data as 4k Netflix does in an hour. That's extremely relevant when suddenly all your customers want to be able to do that. Really, I completely don't even understand what your point is. Yes, modern internet use cases require more bandwidth than in the old days, therefore, if you as an ISP want to enable people to make use of those, you have to somehow provide them with more bandwidth. So far, I understand and I agree. What I don't understand is how you manage to go from there to "... therefore, ISPs should be able to bill customers more per gigabyte of Debian ISOs than per gigabyte of low-quality youtube streams", or maybe even that that would be required to achieve that goal?! I mean, that is the conclusion that you are trying to support, isn't it? None of your arguments seems to actually support zero rating (as opposed to any number of other measures that could be used to achieve the same purported goals).