StreamOn.isTypeOf(“Evil Corp”) ?

Hello friend, let me share with you a thought which occupies my mind for quite some time. But first a disclaimer:

It’s not my intend to induce hatred against Deutsche Telekom. I really think they do a lot of good and it’s only the new service ‘streamOn’ they offered that bothers me.

So there I was — working late at night on one of my university projects. As usual in TEL building next to Ernst-Reuter Platz…yes my friend, “TEL” stands obviously for “Telekom”. Deutsche Telekom generously lets us(students of Technical University Berlin) use 2 floors of their awesome skyscraper.

While taking a break I came across an offer called “StreamOn”. The idea behind it is honestly brilliant. It allows customers to stream video and audio data without using their precious mobile bandwidth. Doesn’t it sound great?

url: https://www.telekom.de/unterwegs/tarife-und-optionen/streamon

Read it carefully my friend. Yes, you’re right — the key word here is “partner”

“Mit StreamOn können Sie die Audio- und Videodienste teilnehmender Partner im Inland auch unterwegs sorglos streamen, ohne das Highspeed-Datenvolumen Ihres Mobilfunk-Tarifs zu verbrauchen.”

That probably scratched that part of your mind that holds the memory of the net neutrality scandal from 2014. If not — you might want to watch John Oliver’s ‘Last Week Tonight’ from that time:

“Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating most of the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.”

Now let’s just state the obvious to make a point:

• Suppose we have 2 competing companies and one of them is a telekom partner and the other is not. The first company has an indisputable advantage over the other one and that’s clearly differentiation of the data depending on the source it’s coming from .
• Furthermore you can observe another level of differentiation of the data by it’s type — audio, video and all other data…each of them is treated differently.

As tempting as it is to elaborate on that I would rather share with you something else that buffles me even more. Consider this:

I didn’t “accidentally come across StreamOn offer” — I don’t browse telekom’s website in my spare time. My webtech homework(which is prepared by Professor and his research assistant) mentioned it. A homework which involves (among other things) net neutrality subject refers to an offer from one of the biggest sponsors and partners of the university. Surreptitious advertising or the exact opposite of it? I don’t know and I probably never will.

That’s all my friend. Thanks for your time and attention.

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