<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Hi All, </span><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br class=""></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I recently just wrote about President Ramaphosa’s announcement that South Africa’s new COVID Alert contact tracing app (<a href="https://researchictafrica.net/2020/09/25/has-south-africas-covid-alert-app-been-zero-rated/" class="">https://researchictafrica.net/2020/09/25/has-south-africas-covid-alert-app-been-zero-rated/</a>).</div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br class=""></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The app is great and<span class=""> I gave the thumbs up in the RIA podcast on <a href="https://researchictafrica.net/2020/05/28/covid-19-contact-tracing/" class="">https://researchictafrica.net/2020/05/28/covid-19-contact-tracing/</a></span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="">Our President however said that the app had been zero-rated for download. This is as the blog post tries to prove, inaccurate and to a certain extent impossible. This is as we have encrypted connections to the Google Play and Apple Stores, operators can see we are connected to the stores, but not what apps we are downloading, so how can it be zero-rated for downloads on these stores?</span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font color="#000000" class="">I am not arguing that we should somehow break encryption for zero-rating, I am rather arguing that zero-rating is an impractical system for reducing digital inequality in access to information and the use of the modern internet and apps. </font></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font color="#000000" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font color="#000000" class="">I would be interested to know your thoughts on the matter, and your reflections on the opportunities and challenges of zero rating in general. </font></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font color="#000000" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font color="#000000" class="">Take care, </font></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><font color="#000000" class="">Alex</font></div>
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