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Ah... zero-rating. Somehow that also slipped through the cracks here in Europe. I was terribly surprised the union could even agree upon some form of net-neutra

Ah... zero-rating. Somehow that also slipped through the cracks here in Europe. I was terribly surprised the union could even agree upon some form of net-neutrality. For some time European citizens somehow made some good choices at the voting booths AND there must've been some strong business reason to introduce it. Without economic incentive it never would've passed.

philjohn 6y ago
It's odd - one of the selling points of my plan with Three in the UK is "Go Binge!" which doesn't count any data used for Netflix et al ... but I'm on an unlimited plan, so it seems rather pointless.
- dspillett 6y ago
  > but I'm on an unlimited plan, so it seems rather pointless. It makes sense if you read the smallprint. Your unlimited plan will have traffic controls that vary with how much you use. For instance look at GiffGaff's current offers of £20 for 80GB and £25 for "always on" (in an unusual instance of a provider not disengenuously using the word unlimited). If you have the hotter option and go over 80GB you are throttled down to 0.3Mbps for the rest of the billing period (if you have the £20 option you instead start inviting expensive per-MB charges at your usually throughputs). So what Three are saying is that your "unlimited" plan has traffic shaping based on how much you use (backdoor limits to "unlimited", though in the more common less honestly portrayed form) but that traffic to & from Netflix does not get added to the counters which affect those traffic shaping rules. I've not read Three's relevant smallprint, hence using GG as my detailed example above because I have encountered their's recently, but I'm confident the above holds because that is how "unlimited" generally works in this context these days. Ah, memories of all the hoo-haa in the 00s & 10s when ISPs were scrabbling to find imaginative ways to kick off people who used too much of their "unlimited" resources workout breaking contract law...
jakub_g 6y ago
There's "unlimited WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook" in data plans in some EU countries. Which is kinda nice, but probably only cements their monopoly.
- zrm 6y ago
  Also kind of odd because messaging apps use a trivial amount of data unless you're doing video. But most people may not know that and then switch to them for "unlimited" and there you go.
  - jakub_g 6y ago
    There's this new pattern of communicating where you talk with multi-megabyte reaction gifs back'n'forth instead of writing two or three words. Unlimited data may prove useful in that scenario. Also exchanging pictures/selfies with the family/friends generates quite a bit of data if you do it on a daily basis.
    - brendawalsh 6y ago
      It is amazing what can be done with 20+ year old technology.
  - manderley 6y ago
    Not that odd: It increases the perceived value of a plan without costing the provider much in traffic.
Aerroon 6y ago
I think they were simply trying to preempt political issues with it. Zero rating effectively gives them the ability to favor certain services over others while saying at the same time that they are committed to net neutrality.

philjohn 6y ago

It's odd - one of the selling points of my plan with Three in the UK is "Go Binge!" which doesn't count any data used for Netflix et al ... but I'm on an unlimited plan, so it seems rather pointless.

dspillett 6y ago
> but I'm on an unlimited plan, so it seems rather pointless. It makes sense if you read the smallprint. Your unlimited plan will have traffic controls that vary with how much you use. For instance look at GiffGaff's current offers of £20 for 80GB and £25 for "always on" (in an unusual instance of a provider not disengenuously using the word unlimited). If you have the hotter option and go over 80GB you are throttled down to 0.3Mbps for the rest of the billing period (if you have the £20 option you instead start inviting expensive per-MB charges at your usually throughputs). So what Three are saying is that your "unlimited" plan has traffic shaping based on how much you use (backdoor limits to "unlimited", though in the more common less honestly portrayed form) but that traffic to & from Netflix does not get added to the counters which affect those traffic shaping rules. I've not read Three's relevant smallprint, hence using GG as my detailed example above because I have encountered their's recently, but I'm confident the above holds because that is how "unlimited" generally works in this context these days. Ah, memories of all the hoo-haa in the 00s & 10s when ISPs were scrabbling to find imaginative ways to kick off people who used too much of their "unlimited" resources workout breaking contract law...

jakub_g 6y ago

There's "unlimited WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook" in data plans in some EU countries. Which is kinda nice, but probably only cements their monopoly.

zrm 6y ago
Also kind of odd because messaging apps use a trivial amount of data unless you're doing video. But most people may not know that and then switch to them for "unlimited" and there you go.
- jakub_g 6y ago
  There's this new pattern of communicating where you talk with multi-megabyte reaction gifs back'n'forth instead of writing two or three words. Unlimited data may prove useful in that scenario. Also exchanging pictures/selfies with the family/friends generates quite a bit of data if you do it on a daily basis.
  - brendawalsh 6y ago
    It is amazing what can be done with 20+ year old technology.
- manderley 6y ago
  Not that odd: It increases the perceived value of a plan without costing the provider much in traffic.

Aerroon 6y ago

I think they were simply trying to preempt political issues with it. Zero rating effectively gives them the ability to favor certain services over others while saying at the same time that they are committed to net neutrality.