Verizon and Facebook catch net neutrality heat … 5 things to know today
1. Verizon Wireless is under fire for zero rating its Go90 mobile video service. Go90 is a free video streaming app available to customers of any mobile carrier. It offers access to prime time TV shows as well as live music and sports, and for Verizon Wireless customers none of that counts against data caps.
This so-called zero rating practice is one of the gray areas of the Open Internet Order adopted last year by the Federal Communications Commission. It is not expressly forbidden, and several wireless carriers have experimented with zero rating. AT&T has said that it wants to allow corporate customers to sponsor zero-rated data for consumers. In addition, the company is expected to leverage DirecTV’s relationships with content providers to develop mobile-first video offerings.
Critics claim that zero rating is anti-competitive because it makes the carrier’s or sponsor’s video offering more attractive to consumers than other video services. Carriers or their clients can steer consumers to certain content by making it more affordable, putting smaller content providers at a disadvantage.
2. Net neutrality has derailed Facebook’s plan to offer free Internet access to people in India. Facebook is trying to offer access to the Internet to mobile phone users in India; the Free Basics service includes job listings, weather, and a limited version of Facebook. Now regulators in India have banned the service, saying it violates the country’s net neutrality law.
The debate over Facebook’s Free Basics service was not just about Internet access for the poor. Startups in the world’s second most populous country wanted to compete on a level playing field, and enlisted support from the global tech community to oppose Facebook.
3. BlackBerry has cut 200 jobs in Waterloo, Ontario and Sunrise, Florida. The company that pioneered the smartphone now has less than 1% U.S. market share for its proprietary BlackBerry operating system. The Canadian company has started making Android phones that use a slide-out keyboard. CEO John Chen has said that BlackBerry will release at least one new Android phone this year, and will not release a phone based on its own operating system in 2016.
4. Nvidia did not infringe a Samsung patent related to memory chips, according to a federal jury in Virginia. The ruling is a win for Nvidia, but comes on the heels of a defeat in a case that may have been more relevant for the California chipmaker. In December, the U.S. International Trade Commission upheld a judge’s ruling that Samsung and Qualcomm did not infringe Nvidia’s patent for graphics processing chips.
5. Google is fighting back against Samsung’s effort to let smartphone users block ads. The world’s largest smartphone maker recently published an update to its proprietary web browser software to let developers build ad-blocking apps for Android 5.0. It didn’t take long for ad-blocking apps to hit the Google Play store, and it didn’t take long for Google to respond. The advertising giant pulled the first ad blocking app from Google Play last week.
