Abstract
Several developed countries have recently legislated for or regulated for net neutrality, the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should not discriminate between different applications, services and content accessed by their users. This came after 20 years of attempted discrimination between content streams within the walled gardens of both fixed and mobile ISPs, such as AOL in the 1990s, BT Openworld (sic) around 2000 and Vodafone Live/360 in 2002-11, which was intended to challenge the Apple AppStore and Android/GooglePlay. Alongside their walled gardens, these ISPs enforced monthly data caps preventing their customers having unlimited use of the Internet.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
BT Openworld (known internally as ‘OpenWoe’) was merged with BT’s joint venture BT-Yahoo! in 2002. Timms (2003).
- 3.
Wray (2009).
- 4.
Marsden (2010a).
- 5.
Marsden (2013).
- 6.
- 7.
ERMERT, MONIKA (2013) Managed services – a net neutrality trap? Internet Policy Review 03 MAY 2013 at http://policyreview.info/articles/news/managed-services-%E2%80%93-net-neutrality-trap/125.
- 8.
Open Internet Advisory Committee (2013), p. 13.
- 9.
Wu (2007).
- 10.
About.com (2009).
- 11.
Lemstra et al. (2010). WiFi is the brand name for the IEEE802.11 family of standards, protocol released 1997, trademark adopted 1999.
- 12.
ABI Research (2015).
- 13.
Marcus and Burns (2013).
- 14.
AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 321 (2011).
- 15.
Neal (2015).
- 16.
Brown and Marsden (2013), p. xii.
- 17.
Cited in Brown and Marsden (2013), p. 123.
- 18.
CRTC (2015).
- 19.
Odlyzko et al. (2012), p. 15.
- 20.
Fierce Wireless (2011), p. 18.
- 21.
Source: International Telecommunications Union (2015).
- 22.
12.5 GB for €12, see Orange Romania (2015).
- 23.
See TIM Brazil (2015).
- 24.
Telegeography (2015).
- 25.
A major policy challenge for the attempts to consolidate and reduce competition in mobile telecoms came with the EC veto of TeliaSonera’s attempt to buy a Danish mobile network in 2015. See Europa (2015).
- 26.
Sutherland (2012), pp. 4–19.
- 27.
See Facebook (2015).
- 28.
Ruadhan (2015).
- 29.
Brinkmann (2015).
- 30.
Access Now (2015).
- 31.
Bode (2015).
- 32.
Smith (2015).
- 33.
Marsden (2015b), http://www.slideshare.net/EXCCELessex/fgv-law-marsden-gringo-net contains many graphic illustrations of zero rating strategies by Facebook and Wikimedia.
- 34.
Drossos (2015).
- 35.
- 36.
Department of Economic Affairs (2015). In summary: “Pursuant to the Act, providers of internet access services may not block or obstruct services and applications on the Internet (with limited strict exceptions). Furthermore, providers may not differentiate between tariffs for internet access services, and services and applications provided or used through these services.”
- 37.
Sørensen (2014).
- 38.
Canada has had a chequered record on net neutrality until 2015, with rules proclaimed by the regulator in 2009 but not enforced until this year. In 2011, the regulator explicitly supported capacity-based billing (rate caps) in Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-703, Billing practices for wholesale residential high-speed access services (TRP 2011-703), which led the main ISPs to stop throttling video and other high bandwidth content as they had admitted so doing since 2008. It then adopted greater enforcement practices for net neutrality in 2014. Marsden (2015a).
- 39.
van Eijk (2014).
- 40.
The other two cases in 2013/14 concerned public Wifi and mobile ISP throttling: “The regulator in charge – the Authority for Consumers and Markets – took a first decision on applying the new rules in a case where Internet access in trains was blocked for congestion reasons. In another case, a service similar to WhatsApp was inaccessible via wireless networks” (van Eijk 2014).
- 41.
Turk (2015).
- 42.
Caf (2014).
- 43.
Caf (2015).
- 44.
The Chilean ‘Law 20.453 Which enshrines the principle of net neutrality for consumers and Internet users’, of 18 August 2010 at http://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=1016570&buscar=NEUTRALIDAD+DE+RED which is implemented by Decree 368 of 15 December 2010: http://www.subtel.gob.cl/images/stories/articles/subtel/asocfile/10d_0368.pdf.
- 45.
Cerda (2013).
- 46.
Huichalaf Roa (2015), p. 20.
- 47.
In Chile, a total of 40 cases may sound substantial, but 25 were in the first 2 years, and fully 29 relate to those four major ISPs. Most were for infringement of transparency rules or network self-measurement. Zero rating in 2014 was considered by many observers as the first true test.
- 48.
See Rossini and Moore (2015) explaining the exchange of letters between Wikimedia Foundation and Subtel in 2014.
- 49.
The draft Direction of May 2014 apparently banned all zero rating, but the final decision of August 2014 permitted those plans offered only in addition to a data plan—i.e. where users had purchased wider access to escape the walled garden.
- 50.
For Airtel’s collaboration with Internet.Org in Zambia, see Airtel Africa (2015).
- 51.
Pahwa (2015).
- 52.
Vallina-Rodriguez et al. (2015). The paper describes privacy violations and header enrichment practices performed by mobile operators (perma-cookies, x-forwarded-for, IMEI, IMSI,…).
- 53.
Doval (2015).
- 54.
Quotation from Doval (2015).
- 55.
Wohlers et al. (2014).
- 56.
Law No. 12.965, April 23 2014 by the Presidency of the Republic, Civil House Legal Affairs Subsection.
- 57.
Cruz et al. (2015).
- 58.
- 59.
- 60.
Antunes (2015).
- 61.
Marques et al. (2015), pp. 66–67.
- 62.
Prescott (2015).
- 63.
Brown and Marsden (2013).
- 64.
- 65.
Jain et al. (2015), pp. 11, 17–18.
- 66.
- 67.
- 68.
In practice BEREC has an increasingly effective coordinator role for its members, which may be reflected in the final version of the ConnectedContinent Regulation still pending in September 2015. See for example Sorensen (2015) cited in Marsden (2015a).
- 69.
Freischlad (2015) states “Even in China, which is a more mature market [than Indonesia] by most measures and smartphone penetration is higher, data usage itself remains low. This tells us either Chinese smartphone users are not interested in using their phones on the go, or they are simply being thrifty.”
- 70.
Olsen (2015).
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Marsden, C.T. (2016). Zero Rating and Mobile Net Neutrality. In: Belli, L., De Filippi, P. (eds) Net Neutrality Compendium. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26425-7_18
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