AT&T's Sponsored Data is bad for the internet, the economy, and you

[Commentary] AT&T’s Sponsored Data program is a way for AT&T to levy taxes on companies who can afford to pay. That has huge implications for the free market of the internet: if YouTube doesn't hit your data cap but Vimeo does, most people are going to watch YouTube. If Facebook feels threatened by Snapchat and launches Poke with free data, maybe it doesn't get completely ignored and fail. If Apple Maps launched with free data for navigation, maybe we'd all be driving off bridges instead of downloading Google Maps for iOS.

That's not fair competition; that's just pay-to-play.

Pull the thread out even farther and it gets even more evil: if sponsored data becomes a de facto cost of business in the exploding mobile market, those costs will just get passed right back to consumers. And rest assured that AT&T will find a way to keep your service rates high and your contract terms restrictive; nothing about this plan involves shifting AT&T's profits, just increasing them. Lower-income customers on cheaper plans will be disproportionately affected: you and I might still pay for data and use whatever services we want, but anyone counting bits will be buffeted into a world of corporate control. If AT&T can levy taxes on access to a hundred million subscribers who are increasingly turning to mobile devices over traditional PCs, that turns the wireless behemoth into major economic gatekeeper on the internet -- a situation that would flagrantly violate the network neutrality principles that govern landline internet but were waived for mobile. That was a huge policy mistake, and now we're paying the price.