Zero-rating: a gift horse?
Growing numbers of telecoms companies are launching so-called zero-rating offers: toll-free data or sponsored data. Vodafone in Spain has just unveiled a package that allows its subscribers free WhatsApp messages. The problem is that this so-called offer must be made illegal. Vodafone Spain (link in Spanish) can call it chat-zero and include other instant messaging programs with it, but to access the package you have to sit down to negotiate with the operator.
Let’s be clear: zero-rating places an operator in the position of deciding, based on its own interests, which services to offer its users. Okay: no one is going to leave a carrier because it offers something free, but the dangers are clear.
From the moment we allow an operator to decide which services it gives preferential treatment, we are closing the door to innovation. We are turning the web into a place where only those who are in a position to reach commercial agreements with operators, with all that entails, succeed.
If a startup wants to compete with one of the services the operators offer zero-rating, it will find that the only way to compete is by cutting a deal with the operator, which allows the latter to name its terms.
The growing number of zero-rating offers threatens the future of the internet as we know it: a place where a startup can only succeed if it is included in a zero-rating package.
This is the thin end of the wedge: we will go from a WhatsApp to music services, or, even certain media, meaning that if you want to access other media, you will have to pay for it. The operators become our gatekeepers to the internet.
It is essential that we oppose zero-rating: this is about protecting the internet as we know it. These companies are not offering us a bargain, a gift or anything special. Signing up to these offers is short-sighted, and means sacrificing the internet as we know it. Far from giving us something for nothing, companies that offer zero-rating are taking away the right to an open and free internet in which services succeed because of what they are, and not by the agreements they reach with an operator. This is one gift horse that we should look very closely in the mouth.
(En español, aquí)
