The internet could suffer if companies start paying your wireless bill

Under AT&T’s so-called sponsored data plans, companies that provide apps to their customers will pay for the bandwidth used to consume their apps on smartphones, rather than data consumers paying for the bandwidth themselves.

For willing companies, the arrangement is a way to win the loyalty of its customers away from competitors; when an AT&T customer uses these companies’ apps on a wireless network, it doesn’t eat into their data allowance. Sponsored data is a way for telecoms to tap into mobile advertising revenue streams indirectly. The question is whether it undermines network neutrality, the idea of the Internet remaining an open medium. The fear is that if sponsored data takes off, cash-rich social networks like Facebook could try to stifle emerging competitors such as Twitter or Snapchat by offering to pay for their customers’ usage. That could conceivably lead to an inferior Facebook experience (with a deluge of advertising to pay for it) and an inferior Internet, where emerging platforms find it difficult to compete. The Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules don’t apply to wireless networks. Unless that changes, the company-paid Internet of the future could be a lot less friendly.