Regulators Everywhere Wrestling With Zero Rating, Rutgers' Goodman Says
Regulators around the world have wrestled with zero rating and are offering different solutions, said Ellen Goodman, professor at Rutgers Law School, in a new paper. The Netherlands banned zero rating, while Chile allows only zero rating of noncommercial services…
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like Wikipedia, Goodman wrote. The EU has been silent, while the U.S. is taking case-by-case approach, she said. “Even where there has been a preliminary decision, the issue of zero rating is in flux,” Goodman said. “The market impact of differential pricing is difficult to predict and assess, and is likely to vary with the particular practice, the state of broadband competition, and other features of fluid Internet market structures.” In the U.S., zero rating is being looked at against the backdrop of the war over net neutrality, Goodman said. “The zero-rating debate revisits the almost theological conflicts of net neutrality,” she wrote. “What constitutes innovation and what regulatory and business relationships best promote it? Are broadband carriers, if unconstrained by regulation, incentivized to keep connectivity costs artificially high? Do data caps constitute rent seeking or efficient price discrimination?”