AT&T has just criticized the net neutrality laws recently passed in California, blaming the state for not being able to provide certain data functions to consumers.
“We regret customer inconvenience caused by California’s new ‘net neutrality’ law,” AT&T said in a statement. Blog post on Wednesday.
Last month, US Court Judge John Mendez ruled that state laws on net neutrality could be officially implemented, which means that wireless carriers like AT&T must treat all internet traffic the same. The California law has been in the language since 2018, as the Trump-era DOJ filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming it has no authority to pass its own net neutrality laws. California prevented law enforcement, and the lawsuit never went away. The DOJ has officially dropped its lawsuit against California when the Biden administration took over.
Under the new law, Internet service providers and wireless operators cannot intentionally block websites, flap bandwidth, or charge money for specific online content. Internet service providers can no longer dictate which sites, content, or applications receive preferential treatment.
This means that AT&T no longer has the capacity to offer so-called zero rating scheme, or data ceiling exemptions for its subscribers. The operator did just that by offering its internal streaming service, HBO Max, an exemption so that customers who transmitted from the service would not see that data usage is calculated up to their monthly limit. That is about to change.
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After AT&T acquired WarnerMedia in 2018, which owns HBO, the company launched its HBO Max streaming service in May 2020. Because AT&T owned the streaming service, it decided that it would not consider using this data within the monthly data limits. of its customers. AT&T said its “sponsored data” system actually allows any company to pay the carrier to relieve it of data caps.
“AT&T Mobility has been inviting any entity to become a wireless data sponsor for the same terms and conditions for many years,” the company said in a statement.
It’s easy to say that when you have a streaming service, you don’t take customer data limits into account. But AT&T has not disclosed what (or if) any other streaming services they currently take in that offering. It has been reported in the past that big streaming companies like it Netflix paid AT&T to reduce buffer times, but currently Netflix streaming counts for the data limit.
Finally, Judge Mendez denied that AT&T and other ISP lobby groups have filed an order, and now the lobby groups are appealing that decision in the US Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit. It seems that internet service providers have not yet finished the fight against net neutrality.
The bad news is that if you’re a subscriber to AT&T, which was looking for HBO Max – which, uh, sure – now, all the streaming will consume your monthly data allowance. But for the sake of the internet, it’s an advantage that should work.