Verizon’s testing free internet for its mobile subscibers – so of course there’s a catch

Late last year we reported that Verizon was about to start testing the Web’s equivalent of ‘free’ long-distance calls and now the telco has gone live with two packages for companies to foot the bill for your complimentary surfing.

If you’re a post-pay Verizon customer, advertisers can now start paying to serve you the content they want you to see – and you’ll know it when you see a little bee.

Yes, whenever you see a bee in an app or on a website, the content you’re reading will not be eating up your data because an advertiser is either paying to get you to click on something, or paying per megabyte of data for you to engage with their content.

Brands already signed up to participate in the pay-per-click trial, which is so far limited to 1,000 subscribers, include Hearst Magazines, AOL – which is owned by Verizon – and GAMEDAY.

The megabyte model is already live in beta across all of Verizon’s post-pay subscribers.

Given that Verizon will now be incentivized to favour certain content over the rest, this doesn’t sound like the neutral net that the internet gods intended.

➤ Introducing FreeBee Data: The new sponsored data service from Verizon [Verizon via Engadget]