Recently, Verizon has announced that they will be introducing a new service-sponsored data. What this means is that companies can pay Verizon to not have their data count towards an individual's monthly data cap. While sponsored data may seem like a good idea at its highest level, the issue boils down to one thing: net neutrality.
Net neutrality has been a hot topic over the past several months. Net neutrality is "the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites." In a nutshell, net neutrality is not censoring the Internet, and that all data should be treated equal.
After reading the definition, it should become painfully obvious how Verizon is attempting to breach this. By having sponsors pay for customers' data, that data would not be treated "equally" as compared to the rest. Verizon would essentially be the "gatekeeper" to mobile data. Companies that can afford to pay for the data get free data for their users, while companies with much less capital, namely startups, will not be able to afford the sponsored data. Verizon is doing what they do best - asserting their dominance in the technology market.
While this notion may seem great for Verizon customers, it has a caveat. To compensate for the additional data Verizon will be providing without direct revenue, monthly data caps will be dropped by 100 MB. This may not seem significant at first, but if a customer is on a data plan with only 512 MB of data shared between several people, 100 MB may be several weeks worth of Internet access. Verizon's plan to completely throw away net neutrality and ultimately betray their customers is beyond my comprehension, and this plan should be completely thrown away.
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