I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;re after customer money. They want service provider money.<p>If what telekom is trying in germany is a any indication, the plan is to move all traffic to the BingeOn mode. After that, they degrade services that are not paying them and zero-rate + allow higher bitrates for services that pay them.<p>But &quot;paying&quot; is not cash if the talk in our startup scene is to be believed. Telekom is pulling out of startup incubating (after failing miserably) and are trying to use their position as an intermediary to get equity off of every new startup.<p>How? Imagine a new startup &quot;meflixtube&quot;: growth is good, funding is secured, everything looks great. Telekom notices and says &quot;would be a shame if something degrading would happen to your service, ey? give us a few percent of equity and you&#x27;ll get zero-rated, undegraded access to our customers&quot;. Now instead of getting a few $$$, they are in line to get a few 100 million $$$ when a few of the new startups take off. They can even make sure that the startups they have &quot;convinced&quot; don&#x27;t get any competition by refusing the same deal to competitors.<p>tl;dr: Telekom is not after customer money, their customer base is the market they &quot;offer&quot; to companies and zero-rated, undegraded data is their gate.