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It also cuts down on the number of companies they can extort for transit. Right now they can go to Netflix and say "would be a shame if T-Mobile customers coul

It also cuts down on the number of companies they can extort for transit. Right now they can go to Netflix and say "would be a shame if T-Mobile customers couldn't view movies during peak hours" and Netflix has to pay them for that not to happen. With all the traffic going through Apple, Apple is the only company they can extort this way. (Meanwhile, Apple or their "third-party provider" could of course play this game, but historically tech companies have been super uninterested in doing this.) Basically, what everyone wants is for companies like T-Mobile to be a dumb pipe. They invested in spectrum and a network, and they should just lease that network for cost + profit margin. Instead, they want to milk it. They want you to pay more for particular packets. They want the rest of the Internet to pay more for particular packets. They want to inject their own ads into unaffiliated websites. They want to build a marketing profile based on what sites you visit, and send you "offers" based on this. Right now, that is all technically possible, so they'd be defrauding their shareholders if they didn't try. But, we can of course say "no" and route around the damage. Apple is letting their customers say "no", and that means T-Mobile is doomed to irrelevance, and that's a great thing. Infrastructure should be infrastructure. (Can you imagine what it would be like if other utilities did this kind of shit? Your water would cost less if you were using it to run a Coke-branded soft drink dispenser, but not a Pepsi one. Or, Dell computers could get electricity at a 10% discount, but not Asus ones. It would be unthinkable! But with these big ISPs, it's mandatory.)

jrockway 5y ago
I hate to reply to myself, but I wanted to say one other thing. When governments sell RF spectrum to companies, the expectation is that they become good stewards of the shared resource. The taxpayers are saying "you know, we think private industry can give us more value from our RF spectrum than the government", and this is their chance to prove that. What we didn't want was to enable a monopolist to nickel-and-dime the Internet to death. I'm guessing the exact legal agreements didn't spell it out like this, but that's how I think of it. Only one company can use this finite resource at once, but just because they bought it doesn't mean there is no limit to what they can do with it.
markbnj 5y ago
> Right now, that is all technically possible, so they'd be defrauding their shareholders if they didn't try. Can you expand on this? Are you saying that if a business opportunity exists and a company elects not to pursue it that constitutes defrauding shareholders? I would have thought it constituted nothing more than a disagreement over strategy.
- sodality2 5y ago
  It sounds like a sarcastic statement of the "profits not gained is profit lost" mindset and that shareholders would be upset, not literally a crime.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    Yup, you're exactly right. I wrote it without thinking much (but wasn't fully serious), and didn't realize it would generate this much discussion. That's my bad for being a little careless with my rant. Thanks for clarifying it a little on my behalf.
balls187 5y ago
> Meanwhile, Apple or their "third-party provider" could of course play this game, but historically tech companies have been super uninterested in doing this. Apple notoriously "extorts" developers to be in the app store. > Basically, what everyone wants is for companies like T-Mobile to be a dumb pipe. They invested in spectrum and a network, and they should just lease that network for cost + profit margin. I don't think you've considered the alternatives if T-Mobile can no longer monetize traffic: * Go back to subscribers pay per kb usage * Eat the costs themselves * Raise cost of mobile data plans > Can you imagine what it would be like if other utilities did this kind of shit? They side step this problem by charging per-use. During peak demand, prices go up. Each customer pays their share. Downside see Texas snowstorm.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I really don't see the horror that would be carriers charging for usage. I would rather that than pay for stupid things like "lines" or "devices."
- acdha 5y ago
  > Go back to subscribers pay per kb usage They charge $70/month for “unlimited” data which is only 50GB before throttling. I’m pretty sure they can profitably afford to run a network for that much without reselling user data.
- darkarmani 5y ago
  They already charge per kb. Look at the small print -- once you hit a certain amount of usage, you are drastically rate-limited. The only difference is that some months, when you don't hit your limit, you pay more per byte.
acdha 5y ago
> Right now, that is all technically possible, so they'd be defrauding their shareholders if they didn't try. This sounds like a clumsy restatement of the urban legend that companies have an obligation to maximize shareholder value. There is in fact no such rule, for the obvious reason that nobody can accurately predict the future and calculate the optimal value. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v... In this case, a company like Apple could say that they are choosing to forgo short-term profits from selling out their users’ privacy because they feel that the long-term loyalty will be greater, and anyone arguing otherwise would still have to admit that this approach has been phenomenally profitable.
toast0 5y ago
Does T-Mobile actually extort companies for transit? When they announced their video streaming throttling + zero-rating, I looked through their the publicly available documents. From what I recall, there wasn't any sort of payment process, and mostly there was two parts: identifying the traffic so T-Mobile knew to zero rate it, and either adaptive bandwidth usage (which seems pretty common for video streaming anyway) or identifying the traffic so the provider could serve lower bandwidth streams. It's not in line with the net neutrality, but it's useful for the direct parties: a) a video streaming customer wins because they can do video streaming without touching their data allotment. b) the video streaming server wins because their customers are able to do more streaming c) t-mobile wins because they've reduced bandwidth requirements Competitive streaming services that are not included in the program don't win, but t-mobile made it fairly easy to join. Users who want to stream at 4k or whatever don't win, but they can turn off the bandwidth restrictions and use their data allotment if that's what they want to do. At my last job, I was involved with a lot of zero-rating deals as the application provider; we never paid for it, and I don't recall ever being asked for payment. Some of the carriers even setup plans without our knowledge or consent or assistance; this didn't usually work great long term, because of misidentified traffic, but it indicates the demand was there without us pushing it.

jrockway 5y ago

I hate to reply to myself, but I wanted to say one other thing. When governments sell RF spectrum to companies, the expectation is that they become good stewards of the shared resource. The taxpayers are saying "you know, we think private industry can give us more value from our RF spectrum than the government", and this is their chance to prove that. What we didn't want was to enable a monopolist to nickel-and-dime the Internet to death. I'm guessing the exact legal agreements didn't spell it out like this, but that's how I think of it. Only one company can use this finite resource at once, but just because they bought it doesn't mean there is no limit to what they can do with it.

markbnj 5y ago

> Right now, that is all technically possible, so they'd be defrauding their shareholders if they didn't try. Can you expand on this? Are you saying that if a business opportunity exists and a company elects not to pursue it that constitutes defrauding shareholders? I would have thought it constituted nothing more than a disagreement over strategy.

sodality2 5y ago
It sounds like a sarcastic statement of the "profits not gained is profit lost" mindset and that shareholders would be upset, not literally a crime.
- jrockway 5y ago
  Yup, you're exactly right. I wrote it without thinking much (but wasn't fully serious), and didn't realize it would generate this much discussion. That's my bad for being a little careless with my rant. Thanks for clarifying it a little on my behalf.

balls187 5y ago

> Meanwhile, Apple or their "third-party provider" could of course play this game, but historically tech companies have been super uninterested in doing this. Apple notoriously "extorts" developers to be in the app store. > Basically, what everyone wants is for companies like T-Mobile to be a dumb pipe. They invested in spectrum and a network, and they should just lease that network for cost + profit margin. I don't think you've considered the alternatives if T-Mobile can no longer monetize traffic: * Go back to subscribers pay per kb usage * Eat the costs themselves * Raise cost of mobile data plans > Can you imagine what it would be like if other utilities did this kind of shit? They side step this problem by charging per-use. During peak demand, prices go up. Each customer pays their share. Downside see Texas snowstorm.

Spivak 5y ago
I really don't see the horror that would be carriers charging for usage. I would rather that than pay for stupid things like "lines" or "devices."
acdha 5y ago
> Go back to subscribers pay per kb usage They charge $70/month for “unlimited” data which is only 50GB before throttling. I’m pretty sure they can profitably afford to run a network for that much without reselling user data.
darkarmani 5y ago
They already charge per kb. Look at the small print -- once you hit a certain amount of usage, you are drastically rate-limited. The only difference is that some months, when you don't hit your limit, you pay more per byte.

acdha 5y ago

> Right now, that is all technically possible, so they'd be defrauding their shareholders if they didn't try. This sounds like a clumsy restatement of the urban legend that companies have an obligation to maximize shareholder value. There is in fact no such rule, for the obvious reason that nobody can accurately predict the future and calculate the optimal value. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v... In this case, a company like Apple could say that they are choosing to forgo short-term profits from selling out their users’ privacy because they feel that the long-term loyalty will be greater, and anyone arguing otherwise would still have to admit that this approach has been phenomenally profitable.

toast0 5y ago

Does T-Mobile actually extort companies for transit? When they announced their video streaming throttling + zero-rating, I looked through their the publicly available documents. From what I recall, there wasn't any sort of payment process, and mostly there was two parts: identifying the traffic so T-Mobile knew to zero rate it, and either adaptive bandwidth usage (which seems pretty common for video streaming anyway) or identifying the traffic so the provider could serve lower bandwidth streams. It's not in line with the net neutrality, but it's useful for the direct parties: a) a video streaming customer wins because they can do video streaming without touching their data allotment. b) the video streaming server wins because their customers are able to do more streaming c) t-mobile wins because they've reduced bandwidth requirements Competitive streaming services that are not included in the program don't win, but t-mobile made it fairly easy to join. Users who want to stream at 4k or whatever don't win, but they can turn off the bandwidth restrictions and use their data allotment if that's what they want to do. At my last job, I was involved with a lot of zero-rating deals as the application provider; we never paid for it, and I don't recall ever being asked for payment. Some of the carriers even setup plans without our knowledge or consent or assistance; this didn't usually work great long term, because of misidentified traffic, but it indicates the demand was there without us pushing it.