If you make a voice or video call over Rogers’ wireless network using Skype, you will chew into your monthly data plan. If you make the same phone call over Rogers’ Voice over LTE network, your data allowance is safe.
Rogers this week expanded VoLTE in Canada to iPhone 6 series phones, joining select Android devices that have had VoLTE service available as an option under phone settings for some time.
VoLTE relies on the same wireless LTE 4G network data sessions do, but Rogers has “zero-rated” voice and video calls made over its own phones so they do not count against a customer’s data plan allowance. Customers using a competing app like FaceTime or Skype are not so lucky — using either counts against your data plan.
That could suggest a potential Net Neutrality violation for one of Canada’s largest cellular providers because Section 27 (2) of the Telecommunications Act makes it clear unjust discrimination is illegal:
(2) No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage.
“It is the main ‘backbone’ behind implementation of Net Neutrality in Canada, along with the ITMP rules (2009-657),” said Jean-François Mezei, who closely observes the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, responsible for upholding Net Neutrality in the country. Mezei tweeted the CRTC this afternoon, asking who they thought would be the first to file a Net Neutrality complaint against Rogers for the practice.
So who is gonna file the part 1 against Rogers for zero rating its new VoLTE voice and video apps ? #CRTC
— Jean-François Mezei (@jfmezei) November 9, 2015
So a voice carrier isn’t allowed to be a voice carrier under net neutrality? Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.