Americans Slightly Freaked by AT&T’s Sponsored Data System

Something not CES related from The Verge:

if YouTube doesn’t hit your data cap but Vimeo does, most people are going to watch YouTube. If Facebook feels threatened by Snapchat and launches Poke with free data, maybe it doesn’t get completely ignored and fail. If Apple Maps launched with free data for navigation, maybe we’d all be driving off bridges instead of downloading Google Maps for iOS.

You know how in Australia we have ISPs who offer services that aren’t counted towards your data use? AT&T wants to offer that to any business who can pony up the right amount of cash. We’ve had this sort of thing for a while in Australia (iiNet’s freezone and BigPond’s green dot to show unmetered data for their TV streaming bizzo, MOG music streaming, etc.) and it hasn’t turned out that evil. I guess there’s a slight difference in that for our ISPs, it’s normally been about peering and network configurations, rather than flat out money.