Discussion
There is a new UK petition:
"Make all UK Government websites free to access without mobile data charges"
This sounds like a great idea. I like it.
In practice, I don't know how easy it would be for a mobile operator to zero rate resources on shared hosting environments (CDNs, AWS, etc).
The ICO, for example, has a link on its website to YouTube (which is certain A Decision in itself), on subject access requests. I doubt an ISP would want to zero-rate YouTube.
@drdrmc Quite so - I doubt that it would be done based on domain name, as much as on the IP address / ASN / routing, which might entail the government working with service providers, to allow for this. But the third party hosting - stuff on AWS etc. - would seem problematic to me.
@neil Back when I was in CDN, the way that mobile operators handled this was to ask the customer to ask/tell us to provide a set of dedicated IPs, only route zero-rated sites to those and commit to giving sufficient notice before changing those IPs.
In practice, what they got was a set of IPs backed by load balancers, so their traffic didn't go direct to delivery appliances, but the performance penalty was pretty minimal.
The customer, of course, paid extra for all of this
@neil this is very much possible, i am quite sure that some providers let some websites not count for mobile data in germany.
Youtube might even have been one of them. (as a marketing thing? come to us and watch as much youtube as you want i think?)
@neil could UK gov have an APN that only allows access to gov web sites?
@neil This sounds like a privacy nightmare as UK/ISPs would then require knowledge as to every website each user visits - basically require DNS level snooping of all UK netizens. Unless I'm missing something (sorry I didn't RTFA)
@neil From https://zero.education.govt.nz/about - "All data usage will be charged back to the government agencies that sponsor the websites you visit".
Definitely not keen on that. Would be curious to see how much those government agencies have to pay to the operators to be zero rated.
@alextomkins That seems sensible to me?
@neil Depends if it's at a reasonable cost, at a high cost because it's mobile, or if they get ripped off because it's a government contract.
Maybe it's all absolutely fine - hard to judge it's not publicly known.
My gut instinct prefers to avoid anything that harms net neutrality., Allowing networks to pick chosen providers of content that are data free ends up harming those that aren't "free".
@neil Maybe one day I'll create my petition that requires all government and publicly funded organisations to publish data on publicly available services that don't require login or subject users to data gathering. There's no way that I should have to give up my personal information and privacy to access government info on YouTube, Facebook, X, etc. If they want to use those services so be it, but the data should also exist on their websites for anyone to access. We paid for it.
(Yes, I am aware of the law on zero rating, in the UK and the EU.
Yes, I am aware that mobile operators have done zero rating before.
My point is quite a specific one.)
@neil MAUKGWFTAWMDC is a lot to fit on a cap.
@neil I want them to turn this into free internet access for people on low incomes, so the right wing press can hand-wring about "Your taxes money paying for Pornhub"
@neil This is in fact not a good idea.
It sets a (further) legal precedent for making some sites free, which really means having a tiered Internet, something telcos love.
With a tiered Internet, they can charge sites for the privilege of being "free" to access, or for being in the fast lane. There is no "fast" lane, fast means throttling everyone else.
Only large companies / Big Tech will want to pay, further entrenching the centralisation of the Internet to the same 10 companies.
@axx Zero rating is already a thing, and I don't see much will in the UK for that to change. So I still think that this is a good thing.
@neil how about nationalise BT/EE and force a minimum free service level to anybody who can't afford it?
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@neil Technically, once upon a time you could look at the SNI in the http exchange. Then IPA ICRs started to happen (alongside similar and censorship, in other countries) and the community moved to hide it, first ESNI, now ECH. I won’t be hostage to fortune and say it’s impossible, but if an ISP could do it, the community would move to stop it (again). My views on ICO hosting on YouTube would need a content warning so I’ll make no specific comment on that.