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The courts have taken a dim view of "bundling" in the past -- leveraging an incumbency in one product area to anti-competitively subsidize another area. Sure,
by judk 12y ago
The courts have taken a dim view of "bundling" in the past -- leveraging an incumbency in one product area to anti-competitively subsidize another area.
Sure, I have 4 cell phone networks to choose from. But how many cellphone+music networks? That is where anticompetitiveness appears.
As a Pandora user, I am not excited by T-Mobile investing its resources in Spotify.
And edge caching already exists, it doesn't need to be discriminatory.
Finally, this isn't even about edge caching or backhaul, it is about reserving radio bandwidth for preferred partners.
- rayiner 12y agoLeveraging one line of business to subsidize another is only anti-competitive if you're a monopoly in the first line of business. But T-Mobile isn't a monopoly in cellular service.
- jacquesm 12y ago> But T-Mobile isn't a monopoly in cellular service. They do however control access to services that their subscribers use. To give their preferred services priority and/or different rates over those offered by competitors or others is something that goes against common carrier principles which seem to imply (to me at least, maybe that's wrong) that there are minimum performance guarantees. T-Mobile currently enjoys common carrier status and as such should attempt to emulate a dumb pipe as much as possible lest they get the regulatory eye of Sauron pointed in their direction. I highly doubt they will risk that just for laughs, so likely this is simply a pilot of sorts.
- mikecb 12y agoWhat if the music service simply pays for the bandwidth rather than the end user?
- ZoF 12y agoThat isn't necessarily true... If you add the conditional, "and other businesses in that vertical don't subsidize in the same manner"; than yeah, that's closer to a true statement, although still not entirely so.
- eli 12y agoYou seem to be arguing against net neutrality in general. Set aside the law... isn't it self-evidently a bad idea to have your ISP picking winners and losers from among the internet services you can use?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 12y agoUnless they get kickbacks from Pandora et al, it isn't bundling. When IE was bundled with Windows- Microsoft owned both products.
- tzs 12y ago> As a Pandora user, I am not excited by T-Mobile investing its resources in Spotify Pandora is part of T-Mobile's free music streaming program.
- danielweber 12y agoAll sorts of bundling are perfectly fine. On my morning drive I heard an ad for an insurance company offering discounts for, literally, "bundling home and auto insurance." Their words. (And it made me think about which kinds of bundling are and are not allowed, so I was a bit primed for this comment.)