AT&T has just paralyzed California’s recently passed net neutrality laws and blamed the state as the reason it can no longer offer certain data features to consumers for free.
“We regret the inconvenience to customers as a result of California’s new net neutrality law,” AT&T said in a statement. Wednesday blog post
Last month, US District Court John Mendez ruled that the state’s net neutrality laws are could be officially enforced, which means that wireless providers such as AT&T must treat all Internet traffic the same way. California law has been in limbo since 2018, as the Trump-era DOJ filed suit against the state, claiming it had no authority to enact its own net neutrality laws. California withheld enforcement of the law, and the lawsuit went nowhere. The DOJ has officially dropped its lawsuit against California when the Biden government took over.
Under the new law, ISPs and wireless providers cannot intentionally block websites, limit bandwidth, or charge money for specific online content. ISPs can no longer dictate which sites, content or applications receive preferential treatment.
This means that AT&T no longer has the ability to use so-called zero-rating schemes, or data cap exemptions for its subscribers. The carrier had done just that by giving its internal streaming service, HBO Max, an exemption so that customers streaming from the service wouldn’t see that data usage counted towards their monthly limit. That is about to change.
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After AT&T acquired WarnerMedia, which owns HBO, in 2018, the company launched its HBO Max streaming service in May 2020. Because AT&T owned the streaming service, it decided that data usage would not count towards its customers’ monthly data limits. AT&T said its “sponsored data” system actually makes any company pay the carrier to exempt it from data caps.
“AT&T Mobility has for years openly invited any entity to become a wireless data sponsor under the same conditions,” the company said in its statement.
It’s easy to say that when you own the streaming service, you don’t count towards your customers’ data limits. But AT&T has not disclosed which (and if) other streaming services currently make use of that offering. In the past, it has been reported that major streaming companies like this Netflix paid AT&T to shorten its buffer times, but currently Streaming Netflix counts towards your data limit
Ultimately, Judge Mendez denied that AT&T and other ISP lobby groups had filed an injunction, and now the lobby groups are appeal against that decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It seems like ISPs aren’t done fighting net neutrality just yet.
The bad news is, if you’re an AT&T subscriber binging HBO Max – which, um, sure – already that streaming is eating up your monthly data allowance. But for the good of the internet it is an extra that had to disappear.