T-Mobile Continues to Violate Net Neutrality - Pokemon Go Won't Count Towards T-Mobile Data

This is "if we allow one app to have free data, then we've allowed one app to have free data", that is, the bad unfair thing is already allowed.

You're still missing the point and just rewording your statements while still making the same argument. What T-Mobile is doing is not a violation of Net Neutrality, but people are arguing that it will lead to things that are a violation.

If you want to argue that what they're doing is CURRENTLY a violation, help yourself. There's teams of lawyers far more knowledgeable than you or I who say it isn't, but you go ahead and argue that point if you want. What I'm pointing a light on is all the people commenting saying it "sets the precedence" for something that is a violation of net neutrality, despite there being no evidence of cause or correlation between the two. There's no reason to outlaw something good (gay marriage) just because some groups feel it opens the door to something bad (people marrying their dog faced daughters).

What T-mobile is doing, they're doing at an (initial) loss. They're not collecting money from the makers of the app nor are they penalizing them. This is no different than when a company gives you a gift card that can only be used at a specific store.

Let's pretend each GB of data that passes over their network costs them 10cents. Now let's say you use 10GB of data, 9 of which you spent on porn and the remaining 1 on cat videos. They're out $1, but they're only going to charge you for 90cents because the cat videos don't count toward your usage. They didn't mess with your porn data, they didn't slow it down, they didn't charge you extra for it, they didn't provide "fast lanes" for the cat videos; they literally did nothing to interfere with the data in any way. Instead, they're just eating the cost on it in hopes of attracting more customers.

You could always pay extra for an "unlimited" plan, and then none of your data would count. Something else that hasn't been brought up yet, despite the obvious parallels, is tethering data. Data is data right? Then why does my tethering data count differently than my device data? Why do carriers make you pay extra for tethering in the first place? It's my data, I should be able to use it how I want, right?

It's because when people start tethering, they also start file sharing. I've seen people who use over 500GB a month on their mobile plans, and it's always from tethering. These companies aren't stupid; they know that most people with "unlimited" data are still restricted by what the phones are capable of doing, but when they open the floodgates to let computers use that same data then the usage skyrockets due to file sharing and HD video streaming and "always on" connections.

They could just simply charge more for the data or set the limits lower, but then they're alienating a majority of their customer base just to penalize the top 1% of users. Over the years I've seen the actual amounts of data usage on network change, but the ratio is always the same; you get 95% of your customers using 50GB a month, 4% using up to 250GB, then the remaining 1% are in the terabytes (these #'s are higher now, but the distribution is the same). I know you're thinking "yeah, but those are probably businesses", except they aren't, they're just residential connections and they've been hit with a dozen DMCA violations for file sharing. ISP's set their plans and pricing to accommodate the needs of that 95%, because even if the 5% aren't happy, they're still just a minority.

/r/technology Thread Parent Link - money.cnn.com