Since 16 july, Pokémon GO is officialy released in Belgium. Hurray!
#PokemonGO is now available on Android and iOS devices in Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland.
source: Pokémon GO News – July 16, 2016
Like usual, every marketing department likes to lift on the successhype of people wandering around like zombies looking for food.
So some phone providers launched campaigns with free traffic for the Pokémon GO data.
BASE abonnement = GRATIS streamen voor PokémonGo, YouTube, Spotify en Deezer! #Stream4Free https://t.co/lol2FJDBI0
source: BASE_nl (@BASE_nl) – August 3, 2016
Proximus does this also, but I can’t find their tweet, instead they have this article on their website: http://www.proximus.be/pokemon
But there is a really big issue with this kind of marketing-campaigns. Since they don’t rate the Pokemon Go traffic, they are zero rating. In direct violation with Net neutrality since they’re not treating all data the same.
Ofcourse there is a legion of lawyers involved in these kind of actions, these kind of actions are legal, because the EU Regulations have been a pity, and allow some loopholes. Also Belgium doesn’t have any laws regulating Net neutrality (yet).
I really think marketeers should think before they act. They should check with their legal department if there is a gray-zone (because Belgium does not have implemented the EU-regulations).
Maybe they should treat all the data the same and just don’t charge for all mobile data instead.