AT&T has just criticized the network neutrality laws recently passed by California, blaming the state as the reason it is no longer able to offer certain data resources to consumers for free.
“We regret the inconvenience to customers caused by California’s new ‘net neutrality’ law,” said AT&T in a statement. Blog post on Wednesday.
Last month, US District Court Judge John Mendez ruled that the state’s network neutrality laws could be officially applied, which means that wireless operators like AT&T must treat all Internet traffic in the same way. California law has been in limbo since 2018, because the Trump-era DOJ filed a lawsuit against the state claiming it had no authority to enact its own net neutrality laws. California avoided enforcing the law, and the lawsuit never went anywhere. THE DOJ officially gave up its process against California when the Biden government took over.
Under the new law, ISPs and wireless operators cannot intentionally block websites, limit bandwidth or charge money for specific online content. ISPs are no longer able to dictate which sites, content or applications receive preferential treatment.
This means that AT&T is no longer able to offer so-called zero rating schemes, or data limit exemptions for your subscribers. The operator did just that, giving its internal streaming service, HBO Max, an exemption so that customers who streamed the service would not see that data usage was counted against their monthly limit. This is about to change.
G / O Media can receive a commission
After AT&T acquired WarnerMedia in 2018, which owns HBO, the company launched its HBO Max streaming service in May 2020. As AT&T owned the streaming service, it decided that it would not count this data usage within the limits monthly data from your customers. AT&T said its “sponsored data” system allows any company to pay the operator to exempt it from data limits.
“AT&T Mobility has for years openly invited any entity to become a sponsor of wireless data on the same terms and conditions,” said the company in its statement.
It is easy to say that when you have the streaming service, you are not counting towards your customers’ data limits. But AT&T did not disclose which (or if) other streaming services are accepting this offer. It has been reported in the past that large streaming companies, such as Netflix paid AT&T to reduce buffering times, but currently Netflix streaming counts towards your data limit.
Ultimately, Judge Mendez denied that AT&T and other ISP lobbying groups had filed an injunction, and now lobbying groups are appealing that decision at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It seems that Internet service providers are not yet done fighting net neutrality.
The bad news is that if you are an AT&T subscriber who has been abusing HBO Max – which, oh, of course – well, now all of this streaming will consume your monthly quota of data. But, for the sake of the Internet, it is an advantage that needed to go.