What Is Zero-Rating? - DTNS WEEKLY TECH UPDATE 12/01/2016

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This week I take a stab at explaining the practice of zero rating and what it's advantages and disadvantages are. First here are some big stories from the week, in case you missed it. 

The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 received royal assent Tuesday and became law. ISPs will need to store browsing history of all customers for 12 months starting before December 31. Police and government agencies will not need a warrant to view the histories. Police and intelligence agencies may obtain a warrant to access computers, networks. mobile devices and servers and copy data. A warrant for bulk data collection can be obtained for those not living in the UK. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC) and judicial commissioners (part 8, chapter 1 of the IP Bill) will be appointed by the Prime Minister.  More than 130,000 people have signed a petition calling for it to be repealed meaning Parliament will need to address the petition." http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38134560 

Sources tell Bloomberg that Apple plans to use UAVs to collect information on street signs, road changes, construction and other details to improve its maps product. A Bloomberg source also said Apple is working on views inside buildings and improvements to car navigation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-01/apple-said-to-fly-drones-to-improve-maps-data-and-catch-google 

Nokia announced the first Android smartphones bearing the Nokia name will arrive in early 2017. Nokia is licensing the brand to HMD global which will design the phones. Hon Hai’s Foxconn will make them. Nokia added a new phones section to its site at nokia.com/phones. Nokia has already marketed some feature phones and tablets. http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/1/13804844/nokia-android-smartphone-2017 

Amazon launched a new AI platform at its re:Invent developer invent Wednesday. Rekognition, spelled with a K, recognizes objects and scenes in images. Amazon claims it can read emotions from facial expressions and tell apart breeds of dogs. Amazon Polly is text-to-speech that is meant to be more lifelike with 47 male and female voices and 24 languages. And finally Lex lets devs make multi-step conversational applications. It’s the same tech inside Amazon’s voice assistant. Lex is integrated with Lambda and other AWS services as well Facebook’s Messenger, Slack and Twilio. Also Amazon announced AWS Snowmobile which uses an 18-wheel truck and shipping container to transfer up to 100 petabytes of data. https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-launches-amazon-ai-to-bring-its-machine-learning-smarts-to-developers/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/ 

Researchers at Check Point Software Technologies say they’ve discovered malware they call Gooligan which has compromised more than 1 million Google accounts. The malware is found in more than 86 apps from third-party Android marketplaces and can gain root access on devices running Android from Ice Cream Sandwich up to Lollipop. Google says there is no evidence of data being accessed from compromised accounts and is using Verify Apps to push alerts when it notices an infected device. Users can visit gooligan.checkpoint.com to see if there account has been compromised. If so phones will need a clean install of Android and passwords will need to be changed. http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/11/1-million-android-accounts-compromised-by-android-malware-called-gooligan/ 

Mozilla and Tor have published an update to patch a critical vulnerability being exploited on Windows to de-anonymize Tor users. The Tor browser is built on Mozilla’s Firefox. The vulnerability affects macOS and Linux as well and Tor advises users on all platforms to apply the update to their Tor browser. The vulnerability has also been patched in the latest update to Firefox.  The exploit uses malicious javascript and code based on scalable animation vector graphics and resembles network investigative techniques used by the US FBI in 2013 to identify Tor users. http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/11/tor-releases-urgent-update-for-firefox-0day-thats-under-active-attack/ 

Facebook Messenger has added 17 Instant Games including things like Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Words with Friends Frenzy. The games are built in HTML5 and load in seconds in your message thread. Friends can compete for the highest score, though they won’t play head to head. Look for the game controller icon next to the photos and stickers button in Android and iOS. https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/messenger-instant-games/ 

Bloomberg’s sources say Amazon is developing an Amazon Echo-like speaker with a 7-inch screen. While it would still be operated with voice commands, the screen would display things like weather and calendar appointments. It also supposedly will have better speakers than the current Echo. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-29/amazon-said-to-plan-premium-alexa-speaker-with-large-screen 

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates Amazon has sold 5.1 million Amazon Echo speakers since its debut to Prime subscribers in fall 2014. The Echo was made generally available in June 2015. CIRP estimates 2 million units were sold in the first nine months of 2016. The Echo Dot and Echo Tap accounted for at least a third of the sales in the past six months. Customers use it mostly as an audio speaker with about a third using it for information and just more than 10 percent using it to control connected devices. http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-echo-sales-reach-5m-two-years-research-firm-says-google-competitor-enters-market/ 

The Wall Street Journal says suppliers say Apple has asked them to “increase output of thinner organic light emitting displays and submit prototype screens with better resolution than ones from Samsung.” Such screens could be used for a curved display. Apple usually works on several prototypes at once, so this may or may not end up as a final design. http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/28/13763072/apple-iphone-2017-rumor-speculation-lineup 

George Hotz shut down his self-driving car platform Comma.ai in October but now he has put the software and hardware plans on GitHub under the MIT open source license. Hotz held a press conference in San Francisco pitching the Open Pilot software as an alternative to Tesla’s Autopilot and said in combination with his Comma Neo hardware designs has almost the same functionality as Autopilot 7. the platform only works on Honda Civics and some Acuras and Neo’s OS will only work on a OnePlus 3 for now. Hotz hopes hobbyists and researchers will push the tech forward and believes Comma can make money by owning the network of self-driving cars. http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13779336/comma-ai-autopilot-canceled-autonomous-car-software-free 

Attackers infected a quarter of systems involved in email and fare processing for San Francisco's Muni Metro light rail system last week. Terminals displayed the message “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted” on their screens. Muni shut down all fare systems and allowed customers to ride free Friday evening and all day Saturday. Backups were not affected though some data may have been lost for a couple days. Fare systems were restored Sunday and service was never disrupted. The attackers told Motherboard they will release 30 GB of data stolen from the SFMTA unless they receive a payment. Motherboard did not receive proof the attacking group has the stolen data. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/san-fran-subway-hackers-now-threaten-to-publicly-dump-data 

The Japanese government announced plans to build the fastest known supercomputer. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry disclosed that $173 million has been budgeted for the ABCI, or AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure project. Bidding for the project will complete on December 8th, with the goal of hitting 130 petaflops on the machine. China's Sunway Taihulight supercomputer currently leads the world at 93 petaflops and cost a reported $273 million. The supercomputer would be licensed to domestic firms for driverless car simulation, robotics, and medical diagnostics. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-supercomputer-idUSKBN13K0RS 

CLOSER LOOK - WHAT IS ZERO RATING?

AT&T announced it’s streaming Internet TV service called DirecTV Now will not count against the data cap for AT&T wireless customers. The service is "zero-rated." 

So what is "Zero-rating" and why does it have so many people angry at AT&T?

Zero-rating is generally the practice of not counting data from certain services against a customer’s data cap. So for instance,  if you had a 5 GB a month data cap and Netflix was zero-rated, you could watch as much Netflix on your cell data connection as you wanted and it wouldn't put you up against your cap. Dat from Netflix in that instance would be rated as zero bytes, so to speak.

There are lots of ways zero-rating can be implemented but here are the three common categories

- Paid zero-rating lets providers pay to have services exempting (AT&T Sponsored Data, VZN FreeBee). So Netflix would pay AT&T and then AT&T customers who used Netflix wouldn't have that data count against their caps. This is often compared to toll free phone numbers where the recipient of the call pays for it.

- Preferential zero-rating exempts a company’s own service or that of a partner. Facebook does this with its Free Basics program and T-Mobile with its Binge On program. Im our Netflix example, Netflix partners with T-Mobile so that Netflix video doesn't count against T-Mobile customer's data caps, but Netflix does not pay T-Mobile for the practice.

- Unpaid zero-rating exempts a certain kind of traffic from a data cap. One instance of this occurred in Australia where a non-profit data exchange, IX.asn.au zero-rated locally exchanged content like University FTPs or game servers. For our Netflix example it would be all streamign video servers of a certain type connected directly to the network would not count against a customer's data cap. 

LEGALITY/PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE

So how do different governments around the world deal with zero-rating?

US - March 2015 guidelines allow zero rating unless it causes causes unreasonable discrimination affecting end-user control, competition, consumer protection, innovation and free expression.

India - On February 8 the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issued the Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services, aimed directly at Facebook’s Free Basics zero-rating program. Those regulations will be in place for two years. 

Europe - On August 30 the EU published guidelines on net neutrality. prohibiting zero-rating in circumstances "where all applications are blocked or slowed down once the data cap is reached." Although some wiggle room was allowed on a case by case basis.

You will hear a lot of people decry zero-rating as against net neutrality but there are some advantages for businesses and consumers.

ADVANTAGES

- Customers can make more use of plans without increasing cost

- ISPs can monetize connections without having to raise rates

- Promotion. Services can get customers to try them out when they might otherwise decide not to

- Access can be provided to those who might otherwise be unable to afford a data plan at all

But of course there are problems with zero-rating

DISADVANTAGES

- Discourages customers from trying smaller services that can’t afford to pay

- Packet inspection of some kind must take place to distinguish data types that count against those that do not. 

- Perpetuates data caps. Caps are a monetary device and have virtually no effect on network congestion.

I hope you have a better understanding if what zero-rating is and you can now do your own research and make up your own mind on whether you think it should be allowed and whether you want to participate in zero-rated plans!