FCC shelves net-neutrality investigation against AT&T

The FCC had shelved its investigation into zero-rating practices of internet companies. The move comes only a few days after FCC chairman Ajit Pai assumed office and marked a reversal of the commissions' stance, which as recently as January saw the commission rebuking AT&T for seemingly prioritising its own DirecTV content over that of its competitors.

Pai had now made it clear that the FCC would not move ahead with the investigation. Zero-rating is the practice of ISPs and mobile providers that exempt certain content from users' data limits, often in exchange for capping the speeds at which customers could access that content.

Zero-rated service is being offered by most major mobile providers in some form, such as T-Mobile's BingeOn programme for zero-rated streaming and Verizon and AT&T's FreeBee Data programme. Facebook, Wikimedia, and Google too offered zero-rated apps.

According to commentators, zero-rating often ended up giving ISPs unfair control over the content their customers accessed, which ultimately hit competition. They point out that when ISPs got sole control over what content sources were eligible for zero-rating, they became a de facto internet gatekeepers.

They point out without net neutrality, certain services and websites would be able to pay internet providers to give customers faster speeds, to the disadvantage of companies without such a deal.

In order to get around net neutrality rules, a number of telecoms companies are now offering customers a preferential bundle of certain services that did not use up data allowances as zero rated. 

These ''sponsored data'' plans did not prevent access to any other site or service, but they worked to the disadvantage of smaller content providers, including the likes of the BBC and Wikipedia, as they could not afford to be included in sponsored data plans as the likes of Facebook and Google could.