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Mahesh Murthy, a prominent Indian venture capitalist, last year described the program as "imperialism and the East India Company all over again," carried out under the guise of "digital equality."
"What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke each other and play Candy Crush, but not be able to look up a fact on Google, or learn something on Khan Academy or sell their produce on a commodity market or even search for a job," he said.
Indians use connectivity very differently than the rest of the world(or at least different from the developed countries). To Indians, phone/internet is a mode of communication first. It was the thing which has been missing from their lives the most. This is especially true for the demographics Facebook was targeting.
The reason is the language barrier. A lot more Indians can read and write English needed for directions, news headlines, legal documents, store names etc, than those who can truly express themselves in English. My mom is a great example of this, she can read and write English, but will have trouble understanding a conversation going on purely in English.
This is the reason her smartphone usage is almost all reliant upon content created and generated by others. WhatsApp and Facebook are the two most used apps on her phone. It isn't that she wouldn't like to read up facts about politicians and world events from Wikipedia, it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck. However, if someone were to forward her a news article, a recipe or just make posts on their facebook, she's a lot more comfortable doing that.
It's been less than 5 years since she got WhatsApp and Facebook, but the social network she has created around the two facilitates her family in ways it was not imaginable 10 years ago.
BTW "It's East India Company all over again" is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India (because it's almost exclusively used against any non-Indian entrepreneurship in India).
And you think enabling tens of millions of people to access these resources will make them....worse?
Wikipedia is a community encyclopedia, by its very nature it gets better the more people access and use it, the more editors there are translating articles from other languages, etc.
You have not listed a single thing that would make it a net positive for a corporation to decide which sites millions of people should and should not be able to visit.
This is to say nothing of the next whatsapp or facebook - this plan is obviously about preventing competition.
You say they use the internet for communication first, is it any wonder Facebook/WhatsApp wants to ensure they control what mediums of communication are accessible throughout India?
What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country?
Nope, just saying that non-English Indian language internet sucks. Yes it gets better when more and more people are using it, but that still doesn't change the fact that millions of people currently don't have internet in a form which they can use to make their lives better.
> What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country?
Same thing you're going to say to that 18 year old kid in the year 2030 whose life could have been different had he lived in a more connected India.
How about saying to him that he should make his WhatsApp competitor work well on feature phones and low bandwidth connections, and then submit it for inclusion with Free Basics?
Free Basics is open to almost any site that can meet a few technical requirements, which are basically that it works well on feature phones and in low bandwidth scenarios and when going through a proxy. There are also some non-technical requirements, such as giving permission to use their logos in Free Basics marketing. [1]
[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform-t...
How is that racist?
Expressing nationalism is not racist unless in specific other circumstances. In the U.S, Japanese and Korean auto makers were accused of stealing jobs and Latino Americans still are... I see it as a form of nationalism.
[edited: to remove Europe and fix punctuation]
Nobody in US who opposes foreign labor in US would ever wanna be called a 'Nationalist', it is the same thing as being called a racist(actually, it might even be worse).
1. Content Quality reduces due to lack of choice, and lack of exposure: Closed-groups are places where spam, false information, propaganda breed to a high degree. Other parts of internet help verify claims/suspicions/hypothesis.
2. Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits: Facebook would hold immeasurable power, once they've got people hooked onto thinking that there's nothing beyond their apps. The content they censor, never appears on their networks; the content they don't like die a bad death, the apps they don't interface with die a rather quick death, the business they don't bless die a death by the guillotine, the businesses they do business with die a death by a thousand paper cuts.
3. MBAs ride the wave with their business plans, corrupt official enact new laws, freedom is lost: Similar schemes by multiple powerful corporations crop-up everywhere. Internet gets fragment, and everyone is left to rue the freedom they gave up. 'Cause its a long battle up the hill, once the rules and laws are in place, they're very difficult to change because of the inherent momentum it affords to all those "rent-seekers" and "opportunistic" businesses that crop up around it. For a case study, refer how the Airline industry squeezed out every ounce of leg-room, and comfort, for more seats, and in hope to turn more profits...
There's a lot of other things that might happen, or not happen at all... but, remember, when something's free, the product is usually the user.
I wanna deal with this monopoly argument I keep hearing everywhere in this thread.
Can there be a monopoly of a web service? Facebook dethrowned MySpace, did myspace have a monopoly? MySpace dethrowned Friendster.
If Google has a monopoly in Search and email then what use is it when it can't push Google Plus? Even with Youtube integration FORCED upon people, nobody used Google plus.
Pretty much every single product other than social networks which Facebook has launched, has been a failure. It couldn't replace Gmail, Snapchat, Instagram.
Microsoft couldn't compete with iPod, Apple couldn't compete on Maps.
It just doesn't matter how much is your market share in a certain existing technology, people judge things based on the products (considering there is no 'price' to lure people away with).
If this discision was taken at state or city level, would be much better. Otherwise citizens/customers lose either way.
What ISPs want is ability to charge more for priority services (which includes but not limited to 'express lanes').
What NN supporters think this would mean is that ISPs will block websites.
Anyone has a right to block any content on their private property. Newspapers can censor articles. TV can only air what they wanna air. You can chose to listen to whichever radio station you wanna listen to. Until the ISPs promise you to not block any website, they have a right to block any website or deprioritize it for that matter.
When ISPs sell you an internet package, a 'feature' in non-NN world they would wanna provide you is: 'No blocked sites' in addition to Fiber, fast speeds, low prices, etc.
Any internet package which has blocked content on it, and blocking wouldn't be done proactively or blacklist-based, but rather like Free Basics was. Only a certain whitelisted sites were allowed. Any such package would be priced lower than a no-blocked sites package. Why? Because fewer people would want it. Discrimination of data also allows investment into the internet infrastructure. It's like Facebook ads are paying for the internet for the poor people.
Imagine this, you find out that people in New York love Mangoes, but there is nobody supplying them with Mangoes(and only super rich people are able to afford Mangoes). You find out that the city of Chicago has a LOT of Mangoes and available for very cheap. So you take your savings, buy a truck, drive to Chicago and bring a truck full of Mangoes to NYC. The question arises, since everybody from rich to the poor want Mangoes, at what price do you sell them?
If you auction the Mangoes to the highest bidder, then only the super rich will be able to afford it, if you sell it at a minimal profit(since lets say you're not in it for making profit) then while everybody will be able to afford it, only a few people will be able to acquire them until you bring back the next batch.
If you want to be able to provide Mangoes to maximum number of people, the smartest strategy is to sell them to the highest bidder, and then use the extra money you're getting to buy more trucks and make frequent trips.
This is exactly what Net Neutrality prevents from happening. When discriminatory services are provided, it allows for more services to everyone. You think that Microsoft will be able to pay to block GMail, where as what will happen will be more like UPS's regular mail vs overnight delivery. Amazon will not pay UPS to ship things through regular mail if UPS started accepting money from Walmart to slow down or block Amazon's packages.
Having grown up in Socialist India, the demagogue who summons East India Company talk scares me more than East India Company itself.
Slow adoption of technology had more to do with fear of automation and job losses, than anything.
Its a win for India. Win for the free market.
There are a whole lot of people making judgements based purely on numbers, but poverty when you see it isn't just numbers. Even analytical folks like Bill Gates will admit to their stark ignorance toward what poverty actually is until having seen it first hand. There's no substitute for seeing what is actually happening.
I agree talk is important and having this dialog isn't meaningless, but there is quite a lot of pseudo-intellectualism and general disconnectedness where people with power are more concerned with the next step in their career rather than the roles of the office they're actually occupying. Or some notion that the ideas of protecting the ideas of net-neutrality in the west are some sort of modern day "white man's burden." If I needed to fix my roof today and you told you I couldn't have just a hammer and screwdriver because they can't separated from the whole toolbox, I would be heartbroken.
While openly violating net-neutrality isn't going to benefit any politician looking for votes for their next seat in public office, the reality is that net-neutrality has been violated all over the world to the tremendous benefit of the people. It's important to note that, while net-neutrality is mostly upheld in the US, the US suffers plenty of blind spots that result from the biases in general news media, social media, and reporting.
Also, to address your original point, implementing nothing will also have massive issues for decades. Your commentary falls under the same heading as the people intellectualizing the problems without having a stake in it. I don't know where you live or anything about you, but go check out rural India some time and find out what real poverty is. If you've never seen it with your own eyes, you honestly have no idea what it is.
Enforcement of these #NetNeutrality principles is the literal granting of the Liberties and Equalities of opportunities, granted to individuals and as such this is a landmark order that will have far reaching repercussions.
Worth noting how this played out. A bunch of folks on the internet, organised themselves and campaigned to stop a $300B market cap corporation and a bunch of telecoms with strong lobbying capabilities. Who would have thought they would win? The situation is worth a Harvard case study or a Nate Silver book.
The future of influencing policy making is right here; and you ain't seen anything yet! Save The Internet team clearly seems to understand the virality of social networks better than Facebook does!
We need to build a more lasting institution to prepare in advance for future papers, have lists of people it can reach out to, and manage the hidden minutiae required to combat these issues.
Because Next time it may not be Facebook, it may be the GoI itself, or reliance.
Which is exactly what we will do.
I think this trend will only grow in the future, and I hope it grows enough and it gathers enough political will to actually drastically limit Big Money influence (that includes limiting corporate lobbying), and to move to a proportional representation system, like what 90 other countries in the world have.
There's a reason why there are like 40% Independents in the US - they are sick and tired of the two existing parties, but those two parties are making it virtually impossible for them to support anyone else. So either they are forced to vote for a Democrat or Republican (because we wouldn't that other monster to win) or they just refuse to vote.
Not to mention that for Congress elections, people virtually have no say in who's elected because of gerrymandering. At least 85% of the seats this year will be safe for those who already own them. So no wonder people think "why vote?" The system is rigged against them by design. This is no democracy.
Can you imagine if they actually had a choice for various other parties that could be guaranteed to be represented in Congress? We'd probably see the Democratic and Republican parties die off pretty quickly (within 10-15 years) if they wouldn't seriously reform themselves.
Lessig actually aggregated many of the extremely important reforms that the US needs to restore its democracy, under his "Citizen Equality Act", but too bad the "Democratic" party never even gave him a chance, and kept changing the rules mid-game to excuse itself for eliminating him.
His plan includes national election day, automatic registration, proportional representation, lobbying reform and citizen funded elections:
CISPA and its predecessors were similar. The entities with a vested interest in having these things come to pass have essentially endless coffers to take the long view. All they need is to succeed once whereas we need to succeed in stopping these things each and every time. It is a war of attrition.
The internet was originally designed (imagined?) to route around bad actors, congestion, censorship. If it no longer does that (and there's some truth to say it never has) then we've failed to build in the necessary incentives for that to happen.
At best I can point out that theres 2 parts to this - the internet infrastructure and the regulatory frameworks.
Till now, we've worked without having to explicitly state the philosophical underpinnings of the web, nor convert that into a law/legal framework.
The slow lumbering leviathans have finally caught up to the nimble minnows of the 2000s. Telecom operators and other incumbents, including governments now know how the web works, and how to make it work for them (to the detriment of the commons).
We can limit the damage of the second, by help build and maintain transparent regulatory frameworks, and in particular - be able to mobilize rebuttals or examples to future papers released by TRAI, or other GoI institutions.
Whats learned here and other countries over the next 5 years, can be used to push for a stronger global framework.
Among the 700 startups who signed the petition against differential pricing, there are very few big names in startups - because they stand to gain from differential pricing.
How is it progressive? This is conservative (not wanting change).
In that light, many people would consider Free Basics to be progress, and as such those people are progressives. Those not wanting change are the conservatives.
1. Here’s How Free Basics Is Actually Being Sold Around The World http://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/heres-how-free-basi...
2. How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Internet Program https://medium.com/backchannel/how-india-pierced-facebook-s-...
For the second article, reporter asked Facebook to put her in touch with Free Basics users. All the people that Facebook connected her were already internet users. But Mark Zuckerberg in an FB post claimed that "19 million people were connected to the internet for the first time with free basics".
Both these articles present examples of how Free Basics is actually advertised in rest of the world.
"Free Basics was ostensibly targeted at Indians who had never experienced the Internet or could not pay for data plans. However, Facebook recently struggled to provide a reporter with the name of a single Free Basics user in India who had never been online before."
Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/india-ruling-trai-free-b...
But it's so thick with its own team's code language that I can't actually parse out what happened.
Anybody know what's going on?
India is not a country where everyone rides on bullocarts or tuk tuks. Its a fast developing nation. Its not what you see in Hollywood movies or western medias. India do not need help on the internet side of things.
The benefits of development are very unevenly distributed. Some areas are the equal of any first world country...and others lag behind even the poorest African countries.
> India do not need help on the internet side of things.
The 800 million Indians [1] without internet might disagree with that.
I think you've forgotten just how freaking big India is. They have 400 million people online, which is the second most of any country (only China has more, with 670 million online)...yet they are so big that this is only 1/3 of their population.
[1] Indian population: 1200 million - 400 million with access [2] = 800 million without.
[2] http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/india-to-have-402-mill...
We didn't have a problem in the 1990s by not having a smartphones. We didn't have a problem without the internet. We didn't have a problem without electricity.
I expect that they'll continue business as usual, and will drag out the battle until they have a captive and indoctrinated audience (after all, they control the content, so you can be sure folks won't be reading about this, but they will be reading about how internet.org gives you freedom and is great and wonderful) who will push the government in favour of banning non-discriminatory pricing.
Unless they just go to https://www.facebook.com/netneutralityin/
But what do they really want? The next billion internet users hooked onto their platform. That's what they paid Whatsapp a whooping $19B for.
I can't presume to know for sure. We'll both see what will they do of their Freebasics program now.
Why wouldn't that work in India?
Reliance (the telco that Facebook has partnered with) doesn't advertise the Free Basics program as "access for the poor" but as "Free Facebook" and doesn't even mention the additional websites available for free on Free Basics.
My guess is that with Free Basics rolled out in 36 countries without any issues, Facebook never expected any opposition.
2) I'm curious how the legislation prevents FB from charging for this service. And what the minimum cost is regulated at.
Everyone in the world should have access to the internet. That's why we launched Internet.org with so many different initiatives -- including extending networks through solar-powered planes, satellites and lasers, providing free data access through Free Basics, reducing data use through apps, and empowering local entrepreneurs through Express Wi-Fi. Today India's telecom regulator decided to restrict programs that provide free access to data. This restricts one of Internet.org's initiatives, Free Basics, as well as programs by other organizations that provide free access to data. While we're disappointed with today's decision, I want to personally communicate that we are committed to keep working to break down barriers to connectivity in India and around the world. Internet.org has many initiatives, and we will keep working until everyone has access to the internet. Our work with Internet.org around the world has already improved many people's lives. More than 19 million people in 38 countries have been connected through our different programs. Connecting India is an important goal we won't give up on, because more than a billion people in India don't have access to the internet. We know that connecting them can help lift people out of poverty, create millions of jobs and spread education opportunities. We care about these people, and that's why we're so committed to connecting them. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. That mission continues, and so does our commitment to India.
US readers: Please note that T-Mobile Binge on and other similar services would be illegal under new TRAI guidelines in India.
But isn't this contrary to the whole inequality issue? Shouldn't richer people be charged more? Richer people are being charged more for state infrastructure via higher taxes - which is also generally applauded as a good thing amongst the young/liberal demographic (in fact it doesn't go far enough many would argue).
So why is it bad for companies to charge more to certain demographics? If people are prepared to pay why's that wrong? Isn't value pricing actually intrinsically "fair" as richer customers are effectively subsiding poorer customers?
The full explanation by TRAI is definitely worth reading, it talks about all the issues encompassing differential pricing, i.e., market distortion, information asymmetry, the natural of Internet and the special case of India. http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulati...
Historically, price differentiation for network infrastructure has been due to costs, not artificial market segmentation; it's important this continues to be the case for the majority of net citizens. As we've seen over and over again, removing cost barriers for utility infrastructure is a tremendous spark for all sorts of economic activity.
The thing is: how does banning Free Basics / Internet.org provide that?
That's what bothers me about this movement: it should be about giving poor people free access to the Net (which would just render Facebook's toy platform irrelevant - no need to ban it).
Today a bunch of activists are celebrating victory, but tomorrow the poor will still have no Internet access. It's hard not to feel like these campaigns are little more than middle-class people patting themselves on the back.
Give access to the whole Internet and not just few specific sites which a megacorp has full control over. The whole argument of something-is-better-than-nothing sounds so much like 18th century colonists. I just don't get why should Facebook be allowed to give so much power without them investing even a penny to improve the infrastructure.
Google's Project Loon is worth applauding, Free Basics is just a ploy to get the next billion users branded as a charity.
And there is no evidence whatsoever that Free Basics helps bring people online. Even Facebook was unable to find a single person who was new to the internet courtesy FBS. https://medium.com/backchannel/how-india-pierced-facebook-s-...
That would still be the case if the verdict was the other way around. There's no evidence that Free Basics actually brought a significant number of new people on the internet (the rate of people cited as joining Free Basics is comparable to the rate of people joining the internet in general, so it didn't change anything)
Note that data plans are pretty cheap in India. The cost of a smartphone that can handle modern websites (especially Facebook, which breaks on old/slow phones and browsers) is more than the cost of a few year's worth of data.
I'm perfectly within my rights to buy up a bunch of land, and build a road on it, and only let rich people drive on it. There are plenty of examples, e.g. exclusive clubs and the like. I'm allowed to sell water at whatever price I want: but if I charge too much, cities will use someone else.
The government doesn't have a monopoly on roads, they just built the biggest one (perhaps with eminent domain), and therefore won the competition.
When there is an enforced government monopoly (e.g. post office), they tend to do poorly.
Also, the internet is a conglomeration of things, so it's not really a product or a utility. I think comparing it to something like water or electricity is apples and oranges. What you want is easy, cheap access to the internet. I agree with you, but I'd like to see a voluntary solution.
Price sensitivity != how rich you are
It was about charging differently based on WHAT you are using.
So, if I have much money, I can have my service freely for everyone, while this other startup, unless pays to internet providers, will be available over the paid internet.
Sure - but what you use, and from where, is highly correlated with wealth
Do you have an example of a case where sites rich people use were being priced higher? It's not enough to say "what you use is correlated with wealth" to support "this effectively this stops "richer" people being charged more", you need to show where websites being used by rich people were being charged for.
This does stop Facebook from giving Free Facebook (+ other services), agreed. Which is a service used by basically everyone.
Because that's poor allocation of resources and discriminatory (people are being treated differently for the same products). Paying more than the market value for a product means money is not being allocated elsewhere.
NetNeutrality is a concept that makes sense in a western context where carriers are basically monopolies. It's unbelievable how good arguments in one context, have been blindly applied to a completely unrelated context.
Activists in the West (who's rep and rent are based on their commitment to netneutrality) without knowing anything about the local context have been cheering on local activists.
Local activists (led by stand up comedians ofcourse similar to Glenn Beck\Jon Stewart) getting carried away by this support (cause Urban India has this strange craving for western validation which I still don't fully understand) have now convinced the regulator to step in and are celebrating victory.
This is similar to how the Egyptians celebrated victory after the army stepped in to depose a democratically elected govt. Just Unbelievable! Free markets are dead. Regulation driven by manufactured outrage or vested interests manufacturing outrage are alive and thriving.
Ofcourse it doesn't help that Facebook and their games are involved which automatically swings every debate into deeply religious territory. As much as I can't stand Facebook and will have nothing to do with them ever, the point of a free market (which produces innovation) has been lost.
If Christian missionaries or Hindu missions go and setup schools and libraries for free in Rural India is someone protesting differential pricing in Urban India. It's ridiculous.
The people who loose out are the farmer\weaver who just need an email address to be linked to the cities. Who is going to provide that now? Rural India is so vast and voiceless that they are the automatic loosers in such a debate.
Congratulations NetNeutrality activists! Well done.
1/ There are no studies that show correlation between free basics and increase in internet penetration. In fact, Reliance Telecom, Facebook's free basics partner in India, marketed it was a way to surf facebook & whatsapp for free.
2/ Google is giving away free internet in Railway stations in India. Unlike free basics, it gives access to the complete internet and not to a set of websites that have done a deal with facebook. No one opposed it, since it does not break net neutrality.
3/ I find it ridiculous that some folks in Western countries can start dictating what's good for the poor in India and think that the arguments of people actually living there are invalid.
I would encourage you to try to understand the issue from a local perspective by speaking to the people who live there rather than have unsubstantiated assumptions.
How the telecoms market is irrelevant to this discussion. Of course they're going to market having access to the most popular websites and apps. Hell, they probably use the same advertising when selling real internet service.
2. Also irrelevant. Internet in train stations is not comparable at any level to cellular data connectivity for 10's of millions of people.
3. You are right in this point, but I also find it presumptuous that the Indians with enough money to have internet are the ones dictating what is good for the Indian people without enough money for internet.
2/ Clearly you haven't the slightest idea of the number of people that travel by trains in India. In Mumbai alone, close to 8Mn people use the train to get to their place of work EVERYDAY. Many of them travel for over 2 hours at a time (over 4 hours in total). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Suburban_Railway)
3/ You have no idea how rich/poor the ones fighting for net neutrality are. You shouldn't be making such statements. It reflects badly on you. The fact is that a bunch of few activists with no financial backing were able to put an end to intense lobbying by multi-billion dollar telecom and media companies.
This is exactly what you expect from a good regulator. I am extremely happy with TRAI. They saved my bootstrapped education startup.
Live in Mumbai and while I dont travel via train every day, I do it quite often and spend hours at the platform or in the train. People actually spend 3-4 hrs in trains traveling.
Yeah. It might have, again might have some benefits I. Short run but free basics is and will hold both the people and companies back. Nobody is criticising Google and others trying to provide free access or subsidised access to internet because they actually befefit from the open internet and there companies aren't breaking net neutrality. Your farmer from rural India probably doesn't need an email address, his needs are quite different.
This to me sounds like Winston Churchill saying Indians don't deserve democracy as those are the luxuries of rich white populated western countries.
>>It's unbelievable how good arguments in one context, have been blindly applied to a completely unrelated context.
People rights are the same. We here in India are humans too.
>>Free markets are dead. Regulation driven by manufactured outrage or vested interests manufacturing outrage are alive and thriving.
Whole point of these protests was to keep the ecosystem for a free market alive.
>> If Christian missionaries or Hindu missions go and setup schools and libraries for free in Rural India is someone protesting differential pricing in Urban India. It's ridiculous.
India has a thriving debate on keeping religion out of schools.
>>The people who loose out are the farmer\weaver who just need an email address to be linked to the cities. Who is going to provide that now? Rural India is so vast and voiceless that they are the automatic loosers in such a debate.
You completely under estimate internet penetration in India. Nearly every body who needs it, already has access to basics. Those who don't, have bigger issues than liking somebody's Facebook status.
Those people eating rotis made from wild grass in bundelkhand have bigger issues. Their issues have more to do with irrigation infrastructure and other larger systemic issues in India in general(not the right time to discuss these issues in this thread). Not facebook or email.
For the first time in years, India has true opportunity to break out of shackles and become a developed country. I have seen the optimism in younger lot and how entrepreneurs of all kinds are solving India specific problems. This is despite the rigid regulations which are being eased as we speak. The future only looks bright.
Peace, Rajesh
1. But with a huge untapped market like India, won't there be any other corporations who would step in to build a Mozilla Phone or the Grameen Phone style projects in India?
2. Not even looking to these saviors, it will definitely be the Network operators themselves who will be tapping this market. Even with Free Basics, it was not Facebook that was subsidizing the content or the network costs. So if the networks were happy subsidizing with Facebook, I guess they will be happy doing the same without Facebook in the picture ... No?
2. They can only do so with their own products now. Not Facebook.
Anything thinking the problem is that the poor people aren't connected enough is seriously misinformed. India connected over 300mil people last year, and guess what, Facebook's effort only contributed ~1% of that number.
Not to mention, over the long term, the very real problem that the Facebook walled garden of apps would present in terms of opportunities for entrepreneurs is much more urgent in an emerging economy like India. India has tried (and is still trying) subsidies for the poor, that hasn't helped. Facebook wanted everyone to go through their platform before reaching those users. Will that help the guy from the small town who just created an app? No it won't.
So yeah, your condescending comparisons to Egypt and your "think of the poor!" argument is the exact same thing Zuckerberg said in his op-ed in Times of India. It didn't work then and it is not gonna work now.
Please edit such personal rudeness out of your posts to HN. It's not allowed, even when someone else is condescending and wrong.
B) I don't see you saying the same to the parent comment.
Here is a concise set of carefully articulated arguments: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1Yfbhrlb7a_z-pQytLPwE... which are very true in the Indian context.
Also your argument on free-market ignores, assumes the absence of a regulator. It might hold when no regulator exists. But under the given condition when a limited amount of spectrum, a natural resource is auctioned to a select number of companies and a regulator exists, how possibly can this be un-regulated?
How possibly can you hand over the power to seek rent from these content provides to these bullying telcos. What would the repercussion be to the consumers of these content.
You can't comment like this here. Please post civilly or not at all.
So even though discriminatory pricing is not allowed, operators can still slow/speed down/up apps and websites. Seems to me a key aspect of net neutrality has not been upheld.
For eg, what if an ISP decides to "slow down" Netflix to 0.1 kbps? I believe this is a wholly unsatisfactory outcome of the entire national debate over the last several months.
This new ban works alongside other laws. Broadband operators must adhere to existing neutrality laws, minimum speed laws, laws regarding unlawful banning of websites.
To answer your question, no, a Netflix lane of 0.1 kbps is not allowed, and never was. Even service provider assisted parental control is not allowed. Airtel had to backtrack Quickheal offer a couple years back because somebody saw it as operator influence. You must implement parental control at home, and your service provider can't sell you the software or that service.
The rules regarding minimum speed for 3G/2G/LTE are in spectrum bid documents.
https://www.quora.com/I-am-from-Mumbai-I-have-an-Internet-co...
How do we know that? And even if they aren't, they will start doing it.
This was a great chance to disallow all of that crap but instead TRAI has been tempted to regulate voice apps, a task that they are simply incapable of performing effectively anyway.
I think you have misinterpreted the comment by SaveTheInternet.in. What they're saying is that while differential pricing has been dealt with in accordance with NN principles, there are two more battles which are going to be fought i.e. i. Defeating the proposal to regulate voice apps ii. Ensuring that no slow/fast lanes are there on the Internet.
Its a "yes, we won a major battle but the war is not over yet" caution. Not an indictment on what TRAI is going to do for voice apps & slow/fast lanes.
First it was monsanto exploiting farmers http://www.globalresearch.ca/independent-india-selling-out-t...
Then came Bill Gates with his vaccines and testing them on tribal children just because the regulatory environment makes it easier to test them in India https://vactruth.com/2014/10/05/bill-gates-vaccine-crimes/
And now comes Mr. Zuckerberg with dubious claims about "one person brought out of poverty for every five people who get access to internet" which seems to be a textbook causation-correlation misinterpretation.
The general public must awaken to the fact that the so called third world is seen as a market with potential for double digit growth and the easiest way to enter them might just be through false pre-texts of heart warming charity.
Doesn't meant it is not true, but I am not sure you can claim that this article is endorsed by CNN.
