What AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner means for the future of the internet

"In a phone conversation Thursday, Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society fellow Ryan Singel further explained the problem. 

"While zero rating often sounds nice on its face, zero rating comes with a lot of problems. [It] gives ISPs incentives to keep data caps low and keep the price of unlimited plans high." 

Singel noted that a consumer can expect to pay around eight times more per GB of data if their carrier offers zero rating when compared to a competing provider that does not. 

But it's more than that. With net neutrality out the door, AT&T is unshackled in a way we've never really seen before. 

"We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen," Singel warned, "but combining one of the nation's top telecommunications providers with a huge content company gives AT&T the means, the motive, and the opportunity to rewrite the internet in their favor.”"