I never thought I would be one to start an online petition, but here we are.

As reported on Channel 7 News on 3/7/19, the NBN Co is wanting to implement a "Netflix Tax" whereby the ISPs (Telstra, Optus, etc) would start charging customers extra for video streaming data. This is WRONG for many reasons.

Firstly, I believe in a free and open internet, this would stop that. Not only would customers lose out by having to pay more money for the content that they already consume, it would be a real spit in the face to all of the people who currently have unlimited data plans.

This would also effect the smaller ISPs more as companies like Telstra and Optus could say that they won't charge extra for the services they own/have partnerships with, which would limit competition, limit customer choice and prevent any new start ups from being able to gain traction.

Why should Telstra charge you extra for watching YouTube or Netflix as opposed to their own service? It is all 1s and 0s between the servers and your computer, so why does it matter? And they will tell you it's because of the amount of data not the type of data that is the reason, but in reality, you could use far more data in less time doing other activities such as downloading or gaming.

Which brings me to my second point: it won't only be the video data that will get taxed. After video, it will probably be online gaming, then it will be downloading games/video/music, then it will be music streaming and then it will be social media, it won't stop, at the end of the day, it is all about money to them. It's not about improving customer experience, it's solely about how much more money they can get out of the customer.