As Pokémon Go fever swept across the UK on Thursday, T-Mobile in the US teased that from early next week its customers would get free unlimited data to play the game for a year.
So far, so good. Until digital activists claimed that this violates the principle of net neutrality. Fans of the open Internet expressed their dismay at colourful T-Mobile chief John Legere’s latest coup.
“This kind of thing needs to be banned—the net neutrality violation to rip off customers (and the magenta shirt),” quipped Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda on her Twitter account.
Co-founder of SparkConnect, Pocket Silbermintz, was so annoyed that he took to YouTube to complain. He admitted free data to play Pokémon Go was exciting news, before whinging: “That is unless you’re developing any other app. You don’t get the privilege like Pokémon Go has. Next week are people going to be playing your app? Probably not as much as the one they’re given free data for—for no apparent reason. Are you allowed to have free data as well like Pokémon Go? No. It’s giving priority of one app over another.”
Others complained on Reddit by arguing that T-Mobile was showing “a blatant disregard for net neutrality.” That particular thread, at time of publication, has more than 500 posts.
The practice is known as zero-rating and isn’t specifically outlawed by US net neutrality rules.
T-Mobile is also giving customers $15 in Lyft rides—”to get to a new pokestop or gym”—and a free Wendy’s Frosty, while 250 people will each win $100 in PokéCoins, and five people will win a Pokémon Go hunting trip anywhere in the US.
New customers can also avail themselves of the free high-speed data offer if they sign up before August 9. With more than 20 million daily users in the US, T-Mobile could be in for a slew of fresh subscriber sign-ups.
"The FCC [Federal Communications Commission] rules do not prohibit zero rating. In addition, it’s a limited time gift for customers through T-Mobile Tuesdays. This is an optional gift that customers can choose to take advantage of—or not," a T-Mobile spokesperson told Ars.
“This is what T-Mobile Tuesday is all about—thanking customers with hot, new, totally free gifts every week, and right now, nothing is hotter than Pokémon Go,” said Legere, claiming that players could easily burn through their data allowance.
In practice, Pokémon Go doesn’t eat up that much data—according to one test, around 10MB for one hour of game play. And there are also ways to game the system, and play on a desktop.
The UK wing of T-Mobile operates as a separate entity from the US company and is run by BT-owned EE. An EE spokesperson told Ars that “before the official launch in the UK, EE saw 350,000 unique users on the network begin their quest to ‘catch ‘em all’”, but that there were no specific plans as yet to roll out a zero-rating service in the UK.
Earlier this week, senator Al Franken, who also advocates for net neutrality, said he had concerns about how Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, is collecting, using, and sharing the personal data of players.
This story has been updated with T-Mobile comment.
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