AT&T Lies About California Net Neutrality Law, Claiming It Bans 'Free Data' (arstechnica.com) 91
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T lied about California's net neutrality law yesterday when it claimed the law requires AT&T to stop providing "free data" to mobile customers. In reality, the California law allows AT&T to continue zero-rating HBO Max, its own video service, as long as it exempts all competing video services from data caps without charging the other video providers. But instead of zero-rating all video without collecting payments from its competitors in the online-video business, AT&T decided it would rather not exempt anything at all.
"Unfortunately, under the California law we are now prohibited from providing certain data features to consumers free of charge," AT&T claimed in its announcement that it is ending the "zero-rating" program that exempts some content from data caps. "Given that the Internet does not recognize state borders, the new law not only ends our ability to offer California customers such free data services but also similarly impacts our customers in states beyond California," the AT&T announcement also said. Going forward, AT&T will no longer exempt the AT&T-owned HBO Max from its mobile data caps and will stop the "sponsored data" program in which it charges other companies for similar exemptions from AT&T's data caps. But this is a business decision, not purely a legal one: as we already stated, AT&T could exempt all video streaming services including HBO Max from its mobile data caps without violating the California law as long as AT&T stops charging rival video companies for the same data-cap exemptions.
"Unfortunately, under the California law we are now prohibited from providing certain data features to consumers free of charge," AT&T claimed in its announcement that it is ending the "zero-rating" program that exempts some content from data caps. "Given that the Internet does not recognize state borders, the new law not only ends our ability to offer California customers such free data services but also similarly impacts our customers in states beyond California," the AT&T announcement also said. Going forward, AT&T will no longer exempt the AT&T-owned HBO Max from its mobile data caps and will stop the "sponsored data" program in which it charges other companies for similar exemptions from AT&T's data caps. But this is a business decision, not purely a legal one: as we already stated, AT&T could exempt all video streaming services including HBO Max from its mobile data caps without violating the California law as long as AT&T stops charging rival video companies for the same data-cap exemptions.