Mobile By Russell Holly Jan. 7, 2014 9:45 am
The same people that brought you quotes like “65 percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 200MB of data per month on average” and “our customers love Skyfire Horizon” are back with an all new plan to make even more money for each megabyte you use on their networks. Don’t worry though, they aren’t really charging you for it. Well, they are, but they sure make it sound like they aren’t.
Currently AT&T charges users a specific amount of money, and in exchange they offer their mobile networks up to use for whatever they say is alright to use it for. You used to be able to purchase unlimited data from AT&T, but they decided no one really wanted that. At their annual developer conference, AT&T introduced a new set of tools for developers that will allow them to pick up the check next time you stop by their app or website for something while using mobile data. They have called it Sponsored Data, and even though it was delivered with smiling faces and eager partners, this is a truly terrible idea for everyone involved.
From a promotional perspective, this has the potential to be great for some companies. They will be able to say “Hey, watch this episode of your favorite TV show on us!” or “If you buy this box of chocolates instead of those other chocolates, you can get an extra 50MB of data on your plan this month. Pretty sweet deal, until you realize you aren’t actually getting anything. There’s a few problems with this idea, and all of them have the potential to turn into logistical nightmares.
The first thing to keep in mind is that, even though you are being told you aren’t paying for this data, you totally are. It’s the same data, and if you don’t come anywhere near your monthly bandwidth limit each month it’s not as though you have gotten anything anyway. If you don’t exceed your monthly bucket of data, AT&T has just made money twice for that data because they still charged the company who offered you the free thing to begin with.
But lets say you have exceeded your monthly data limit and if you use any more you’ll be charged some obscene overage fee. Remember that carriers have said in the past that their internal accounting of data transmitted differs from what you see on those data tracking apps you can get for your smartphone. Is AT&T going to make it so you can only watch that episode of television that you got for free, and nothing else gets transmitted or received? If they do offer this somehow, are they going to break down per app how much data is being consumed in order to make sure everyone is charged accordingly? Of course not, so they make more money off of you either way.
There’s the obvious net neutrality concerns that apply here as well. While AT&T claimed during their conference that there’s no way sponsored data will be treated differently than regular data, you’re still looking at a situation where AT&T is directly encouraging companies to treat AT&T customers differently. After all, if AT&T is the only company to ever roll out Sponsored Data, you have to be able to recover that expense somehow. The three companies that AT&T brought on stage to show off how this service will affect their business were all small trial initiatives that suit a small market. What happens when this is offered to the entirely of AT&T’s customer base?
So there you have it. AT&T has figured out how to charge someone else for what they are already charging you, in an attempt to make more money per megabyte from their increasingly expensive LTE network. It’s going to create a world of empty offers that give you something imaginary in exchange for your eyeballs for a few precious seconds, and the worst case scenario is it causes an army of people who figure out the hard way that there’s no way to actually prove AT&T delivered the free data they said they were going to. What’s brilliant about that is those people won’t be mad at AT&T, they’ll be mad at whoever offered them the free data.
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Currently AT&T charges users a specific amount of money, and in exchange they offer their mobile networks up to use for whatever they say is alright to use it for. You used to be able to purchase unlimited data from AT&T, but they decided no one really wanted that. At their annual developer conference, AT&T introduced a new set of tools for developers that will allow them to pick up the check next time you stop by their app or website for something while using mobile data. They have called it Sponsored Data, and even though it was delivered with smiling faces and eager partners, this is a truly terrible idea for everyone involved.
From a promotional perspective, this has the potential to be great for some companies. They will be able to say “Hey, watch this episode of your favorite TV show on us!” or “If you buy this box of chocolates instead of those other chocolates, you can get an extra 50MB of data on your plan this month. Pretty sweet deal, until you realize you aren’t actually getting anything. There’s a few problems with this idea, and all of them have the potential to turn into logistical nightmares.
The first thing to keep in mind is that, even though you are being told you aren’t paying for this data, you totally are. It’s the same data, and if you don’t come anywhere near your monthly bandwidth limit each month it’s not as though you have gotten anything anyway. If you don’t exceed your monthly bucket of data, AT&T has just made money twice for that data because they still charged the company who offered you the free thing to begin with.
But lets say you have exceeded your monthly data limit and if you use any more you’ll be charged some obscene overage fee. Remember that carriers have said in the past that their internal accounting of data transmitted differs from what you see on those data tracking apps you can get for your smartphone. Is AT&T going to make it so you can only watch that episode of television that you got for free, and nothing else gets transmitted or received? If they do offer this somehow, are they going to break down per app how much data is being consumed in order to make sure everyone is charged accordingly? Of course not, so they make more money off of you either way.
There’s the obvious net neutrality concerns that apply here as well. While AT&T claimed during their conference that there’s no way sponsored data will be treated differently than regular data, you’re still looking at a situation where AT&T is directly encouraging companies to treat AT&T customers differently. After all, if AT&T is the only company to ever roll out Sponsored Data, you have to be able to recover that expense somehow. The three companies that AT&T brought on stage to show off how this service will affect their business were all small trial initiatives that suit a small market. What happens when this is offered to the entirely of AT&T’s customer base?
So there you have it. AT&T has figured out how to charge someone else for what they are already charging you, in an attempt to make more money per megabyte from their increasingly expensive LTE network. It’s going to create a world of empty offers that give you something imaginary in exchange for your eyeballs for a few precious seconds, and the worst case scenario is it causes an army of people who figure out the hard way that there’s no way to actually prove AT&T delivered the free data they said they were going to. What’s brilliant about that is those people won’t be mad at AT&T, they’ll be mad at whoever offered them the free data.
More...
