Net Neutrality and C-Spire’s Confusing New Pricing Structure
From Wikipedia: “Network neutrality is a principle that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers (ISPs) or governments on consumers’ access to networks that participate in the Internet. Specifically, network neutrality would prevent restrictions on content, sites, platforms, types of equipment that may be attached, and modes of communication.”
Internet Neutrality is an initiative that puts the internet in the customers’ hands restriction free. The idea theoretically protects the consumer and keeps the internet pure. The net neutrality discussion is a deep one that has many different sides and applications. For the most part, America has remained net–neutral, other countries are not as lucky. To put the concept in a nutshell, a bit is a bit and no bit is more important than any other bit. Under this idea, anyone paying for internet service regardless of ISP would have access to the whole internet without restrictions.
Many different parties have their reasons for opposing this, and some ISPs have gone as far as placing restrictions that bump against net neutrality’s core ideas. C-Spire (formally Cellular South) just rolled out an odd pricing structure for their data plans that to its core flies in the face of the idea as a whole. What they are offering is a series of “Choice” branded plans that offer “infinite” data. However, beginning next year, these infinite data plans will begin charging a separate tiered fee for streamed data. The tiers are as follows.
30 Day Data Streaming Pass
30 Minutes Free
2 hrs $5
5 hours $10
Infinite $30
Tethering 1GB $20
So, in the wise words of one Clarence Brown, C Spire will be “sifting bits” and charging their customers separately based on the types of bits. Clearly C Spire has abandoned the idea of Net Neutrality and if they were a bigger company, I’m sure they would be taking a lot of heat for it. Their customers that previously had truly unlimited data will now either have to stop streaming or fork up an extra $30 a month on top of the data plan they already have (Unless they are grandfathered in…the C Spire website help is vague about those details).
Let’s take it a step farther and put this in 20th century terms. If C Spire were a water company they would be charging you more for taking showers because showers use too much water. Why is that a big deal? Streaming is a rapidly growing chunk of internet traffic. Programs like Pandora, Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Justin.tv, etc. rely of streaming to disseminate their services.
How this hurts the ISPs is that streaming takes a lot of bandwidth and typically Service Providers don’t want the network strain that comes with it. Other carriers like AT&T, Verizon and Alltel have less intrusive ways to manage data use. Whether it is through data capping or throttling, none of the big 4 restrict specific data types (outside of tethering).
This brings up many consumer affecting questions. Some of the questions are contract related, some of them are grandfather clause related, but the most important question is: is C Spire going to educate their customers on what streaming is and give a list of apps that would fall into this category? To the tech savvy person this isn’t an issue, we can spot streaming internet immediately. To the layman or soccer-mom that is addicted to Pandora, this could really create a huge problem.
I can already see C Spire’s marketing jargon behind the decision. By breaking out the streaming aspect of the internet, C Spire is allowing the customer’s that don’t use streaming extensively to maintain a seamless internet experience while still having the affordable price structure to which former Cellular South customers have grown accustom. Obviously, offering truly infinite internet to all their data plan customers was hurting C Spire in some way, otherwise the change wouldn’t have been needed.
With C Spire clearly making a play for expansion in the past few months, how will this be seen on a nationwide stage? Will it be seen as innovation or will it be a shunned by the industry? If C Spire sees growth, what’s to stop other carriers from adopting such anti-net neutral pricing structures? What are your thoughts on the changes and net neutrality as a whole?
