Latest news is the government still not making it's stand clear whether it is standing for net neutrality or will support the powerful telecom lobby who want to become the dictators on what should we watch on internet. Already the government is imposing bans on anything and everything since they have taken office, be it at state or in the center. They want to control on what we should be eating, they want to control on what women should be wearing, they want to ban on which jokes should we be laughing (AIB). And when all this wasn't enough, now they want us to surf only that portion of net which they will provide us and not what we want to see.
People are not taking this upcoming law seriously for only one simple reason, they are not yet aware of the gravity of the situation and it's repercussion once the law is implemented. The initiative taken by various Internet Activists and by AIB is helping poeple to understand the actual meaning of the problems ahead, is commendable. It is not that the government is playing it's cards holding close to their chest. Somewhere in the final days of March '2015 the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) has uploaded the content of the same on their website and have given the nation less than a month to reply with their queries and criticisms. If the government does not receive enough replies it will go on and implement the rule after April 24th.
I agree they have uploaded the contents in public domain. But the way in which they have put forward, itself will take days together to decode the entire draft document. Starting from it's name, Consultation Paper for Regulatory Service of Over-The-Top services. Half of the population who is using the net will give up here itself assuming it is related to some technical problems of telecom companies or some future plans to provide additional services. Also, like the AIB video specified, the document uploaded on the website of TRAI is in middle of 4-5 windows, with a continuous screensaver above easily acts as a distraction. Even if poeple stay on after clearing the above hurdles they have another big thing coming. This consultation paper is over 100 pages long. Now considering the reading capacity of the current 140 words internet generation another big chunk of users will give in. Hence indirectly, this is keeping people at bay so government can impose it's law in a dictatorial democratic way.
So what is this all about? And why is it so much essential for all netizens?
Net Neutrality is Internets guiding principle. It mainly preserves our right to communicate freely online. This is the definition of an open Internet. Net Neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that Internet service providers should provide us with open network and should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just like our phone company should not decide on who should we call and whom should we not? Similar law applies to the internet. The companies should not dictate which site one should visit and which one shouldn't. And this is exactly what TRAI wants to do. They want to have the final say on what we should be viewing and what we shouldn't be.
Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the Internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors' content or block political opinions it disagreed with. For example, if a giant eCommerce company like Flipkart pays crores of rupees to a telecom provider to ensure it's website reaches all it's users. The telecom company might put them on fast lane and it's competitors, amazon, on slow lane. Nothing is more frustrating these days than slow internet. Hence people will prefer flipkart, thus creating a discrimination. ISPs will be charging extra fees to allow the few content companies that could afford to pay for such preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. For example; if a new entrepreneur wants to venture in the eCommerce world who has relatively less capital at disposal might never be able to sustain the competition. This would destroy the open Internet.
Without Net Neutrality, the todays free net will be charged on each and every click of ours. There will be different packs for different websites. So the basic charge we will pay to for a Net connection will be a name sake charge. To access websites, we will have to pour in more cash. Hence the big companies with ample liquidity in their balance sheets will be able to carve their way to reach the customers by paying hefty cash to ISP. This will indirectly create monopoly in the market thus wiping out all potential competitors who have comparatively less amount of fund flow to fill the coffers of ISP.
The ones in government are trying to forward a theory that by providing websites for free, they want to give the internet access to poor. But the hidden meaning between the lines is by implementing such a law they want to keep the country poor and make the telecom companies richer. It will be the easiest way to kill competition or take head on with business rivals whom the ISPs don't want on their network. Take these following examples. Owner of Airtel, Sunil Mittal, will always prefer his son's Hike Messenger over Whatsapp or Wynk over Youtube. Reliance has already gone ahead with this Facebook-driven evil scheme called Internet.org - where you can access Bing for free, but you have to pay to access Google - and you have access to BabaJobs for free, while you have to pay for Naukri.com. The biggest irony is the same Mark Zuckerberg support Net Neutrality in USA and pays for discrimination in other countries.
Now lets come to some arguments of our beloved telecom companies. The telecom companies are arguing that they pay huge amount for infrastructure while the application developers are earning hefty by using their networks. But isn't it a simple logic that if you haven't developed it, how can you demand income for it. Also being an ISP you are entitled to charge consumers more for faster overall access speeds, for instance charging more for 2mbps broadband connectivity than 1mbps. But you cannot suppress accessing speeds of specific sites.
People are not taking this upcoming law seriously for only one simple reason, they are not yet aware of the gravity of the situation and it's repercussion once the law is implemented. The initiative taken by various Internet Activists and by AIB is helping poeple to understand the actual meaning of the problems ahead, is commendable. It is not that the government is playing it's cards holding close to their chest. Somewhere in the final days of March '2015 the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) has uploaded the content of the same on their website and have given the nation less than a month to reply with their queries and criticisms. If the government does not receive enough replies it will go on and implement the rule after April 24th.
I agree they have uploaded the contents in public domain. But the way in which they have put forward, itself will take days together to decode the entire draft document. Starting from it's name, Consultation Paper for Regulatory Service of Over-The-Top services. Half of the population who is using the net will give up here itself assuming it is related to some technical problems of telecom companies or some future plans to provide additional services. Also, like the AIB video specified, the document uploaded on the website of TRAI is in middle of 4-5 windows, with a continuous screensaver above easily acts as a distraction. Even if poeple stay on after clearing the above hurdles they have another big thing coming. This consultation paper is over 100 pages long. Now considering the reading capacity of the current 140 words internet generation another big chunk of users will give in. Hence indirectly, this is keeping people at bay so government can impose it's law in a dictatorial democratic way.
So what is this all about? And why is it so much essential for all netizens?
Net Neutrality is Internets guiding principle. It mainly preserves our right to communicate freely online. This is the definition of an open Internet. Net Neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that Internet service providers should provide us with open network and should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just like our phone company should not decide on who should we call and whom should we not? Similar law applies to the internet. The companies should not dictate which site one should visit and which one shouldn't. And this is exactly what TRAI wants to do. They want to have the final say on what we should be viewing and what we shouldn't be.
Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the Internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors' content or block political opinions it disagreed with. For example, if a giant eCommerce company like Flipkart pays crores of rupees to a telecom provider to ensure it's website reaches all it's users. The telecom company might put them on fast lane and it's competitors, amazon, on slow lane. Nothing is more frustrating these days than slow internet. Hence people will prefer flipkart, thus creating a discrimination. ISPs will be charging extra fees to allow the few content companies that could afford to pay for such preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. For example; if a new entrepreneur wants to venture in the eCommerce world who has relatively less capital at disposal might never be able to sustain the competition. This would destroy the open Internet.
Without Net Neutrality, the todays free net will be charged on each and every click of ours. There will be different packs for different websites. So the basic charge we will pay to for a Net connection will be a name sake charge. To access websites, we will have to pour in more cash. Hence the big companies with ample liquidity in their balance sheets will be able to carve their way to reach the customers by paying hefty cash to ISP. This will indirectly create monopoly in the market thus wiping out all potential competitors who have comparatively less amount of fund flow to fill the coffers of ISP.
The ones in government are trying to forward a theory that by providing websites for free, they want to give the internet access to poor. But the hidden meaning between the lines is by implementing such a law they want to keep the country poor and make the telecom companies richer. It will be the easiest way to kill competition or take head on with business rivals whom the ISPs don't want on their network. Take these following examples. Owner of Airtel, Sunil Mittal, will always prefer his son's Hike Messenger over Whatsapp or Wynk over Youtube. Reliance has already gone ahead with this Facebook-driven evil scheme called Internet.org - where you can access Bing for free, but you have to pay to access Google - and you have access to BabaJobs for free, while you have to pay for Naukri.com. The biggest irony is the same Mark Zuckerberg support Net Neutrality in USA and pays for discrimination in other countries.
Now lets come to some arguments of our beloved telecom companies. The telecom companies are arguing that they pay huge amount for infrastructure while the application developers are earning hefty by using their networks. But isn't it a simple logic that if you haven't developed it, how can you demand income for it. Also being an ISP you are entitled to charge consumers more for faster overall access speeds, for instance charging more for 2mbps broadband connectivity than 1mbps. But you cannot suppress accessing speeds of specific sites.
Now considering the income generated by telcos. When we look at the publicly-quoted revenue figures of Indian telcos one finds that, like in any other business, some did very well, some
did very badly and others did okay. Like in any other
business house. And when we look at them historically, they've all more than
recovered the amounts they bid for the spectrum. No one is the loser. And most importantly they knew the risks involved when they went for bidding. And they have not invented themselves technologically. So how are they expecting us to pay extra. This is action by force.
Also the forever law breakers are now teaching us law. Cellular Operator Association of India have argued that Voice calls license in our country are governed by the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 which doesn't allow any one, other than telecom companies who hold the license. to provide voice services. Hence they believe that OTT services should not be allowed to provide call services as there are many licensing procedure to be followed and they are not fulfilling any criteria. If in the 21st century we are going to be governed by 18th century laws then the mistake is not of the OTT service provider but the law needs to be changed to suit the current scenario.
Such petty arguments are put forward by TRAI to snatch our internet freedom. Hence we have to step in to save our internet. Please log on to savetheinternet.com and sign the petition. Answer the questionnaire put forward by TRAI and sent it to the given mail address. We need huge numbers to stop this anti net neutrality step taken by the telecom companies. The government says they have appointed a committee look in the matter. But we all know how the governmental process works, almost at the speed of light in opposite direction though. And this pro business government might think more number of times before going against the business class vis-a-vis the people of the country. So we as netizens have to take things in our hand. If we want a free internet, we have to raise our voice for the same. Only they can we have net neutrality else we will be dancing to the tunes of telecom companies.
-SR
Such petty arguments are put forward by TRAI to snatch our internet freedom. Hence we have to step in to save our internet. Please log on to savetheinternet.com and sign the petition. Answer the questionnaire put forward by TRAI and sent it to the given mail address. We need huge numbers to stop this anti net neutrality step taken by the telecom companies. The government says they have appointed a committee look in the matter. But we all know how the governmental process works, almost at the speed of light in opposite direction though. And this pro business government might think more number of times before going against the business class vis-a-vis the people of the country. So we as netizens have to take things in our hand. If we want a free internet, we have to raise our voice for the same. Only they can we have net neutrality else we will be dancing to the tunes of telecom companies.
-SR
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