An ISP serving customers in the Carribean and South Pacific has proudly announced that it's blocking all Facebook and Google ads until those companies pony up a little extra money. In a missive posted to its website, mobile carrier Digicel proclaims that they're blocking the ads to "ensure a better experience for customers," insisting that somebody needs to stand up to Facebook and Google.
"With ads using up as much as 10% of a customers’ data plan allowance, this move will allow customers to browse the mobile web and apps without interruption from unwanted advertising messages," claims the ISP.
Of course further down the page the company gets to the real meat of its plan: forcing Google and Facebook to pay the ISP an extra toll for what's effectively no reason.
"Companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook talk a great game and take a lot of credit when it comes to pushing the idea of broadband for all – but they put no money in," claims billionaire Irish Digicel owner Denis O’Brien. "Instead they unashamedly trade off the efforts and investments of network operators like Digicel to make money for themselves."
This idea that content companies somehow get a "free ride" on ISP networks has been at the cornerstone of ISP-think since way back in 2005, when then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre launched the country into the current net neutrality fight by proudly insisting Google wouldn't be able to "ride his pipes for free." AT&T and other ISPs have been exploring ways to effectively double dip content companies ever since without running afoul of net neutrality rules.
Whitacre's missive has also become commonplace entitlement thinking in telecom board rooms worldwide. Think tankers, consultants, and other telco mouthpieces often enjoy framing content companies as greedy freeloaders, despite the fact companies like Google and Netflix not only pay for bandwidth, they own a massive amount of global transit infrastructure.
Of course what carriers really want is for somebody else to pay for network upgrades because of an entitlement mindset long-entrenched in what are often uncompetitive, government-pampered legacy markets, where executives are all too used to getting whatever they want.
That goal has gotten harder in countries that have established base net neutrality rules preventing ISPs from engaging in what's effectively extortion, but in many markets (like the Caribbean) content companies may not have any recourse to this kind of behavior outside of blocking their services from the ISP's IP ranges.
