[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Pri2

I cannot believe that people still don't get it. If the Flipkart app becomes free on the Airtel network without a paid data plan, it automatically get priority over Amazon, Snapdeal and ebay. People have to pay money to access them. Isn't this discrimination against the other sites? Just because it is free doesn't mean it isn't discriminatory.

I can't believe that people still don't get that providing something at lower price or even for free is SELLER's choice. And cannot be subject to any regulation.

If you dictate prices - you are using the marxist philosophy of setting price.
It has not worked successfully ANYWHERE in this world.

[Jaggu]

Originally Posted by alpha1

If we go along what you suggest, then there would NEVER be any downward price revision of anything in this world.

I would not generalize it. We all agree this is not "anything", this is "spectrum" and it is kinda finite at this point of time. Unless technology make quantum leap and make the usage efficient or cost of infrastructure and relaying cheaper, it is going to be a costly in the future.

With my limited understanding the data we pay is still very cheap compared to any western country which is 3 fold at the least. I wouldn't dare dream it is going to be cheaper in a capitalist economy. EDIT did some digging i pay 450 Rs per month on the not so cheap Airtel for 2 GB, US 1GB is 25$ 1500 Rs and 3GB 40$ 2400 in at&t USA, yes i get more value adds like free wifi hot spots etc but hard fact right now the airtel network is neither great nor offering any such additional facilities, to demand say 800 instead of 450.

Originally Posted by alpha1

I can't believe that people still don't get that providing something at lower price or even for free is SELLER's choice. And cannot be subject to any regulation.

I agree, but is there anything free out there in business? Even advise or consulting is chargeable per hour. We should ask that question.

Simple straight forward explanation and what is happening in US of A.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/n...ty-infographic

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Jaggu

With my limited understanding the data we pay is still very cheap compared to any western country which is 3 fold at the least. I wouldn't dare dream it is going to be cheaper in a capitalist economy.

High prices attributed to capitalism?
Not at all.
On the contrary - the telecom sector has heavy licenses and regulations, which work to reduce competition and make it an oligopoly.
The higher this monopolistic licensing and regulations, the higher the prices in that part of the world.
I think you are under an impression that US and EU are capitalist countries?
Very far from truth!

I agree, but is there anything free out there in business? Even advise or consulting is chargeable per hour. We should ask that question.

Let the seller make losses and get out of business.
If Bigbazaar and Indian retailers make hue and cry about GOSF - let flipkart and amazon get bankrupt!

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by Isnescrpy

You are absolutely right. ISP should not care what you are using your Internet connection for. But the problem is that bandwidth is a finite resource. And when 50% of an ISPs traffic is Netlix, then the ISP will start to take notice. Its only a matter of time (4K streaming) before other services - email, cloud services and so on get affected. .

So, if Airtel Zero is a success, and say Netflix does agree to pay a premium to Airtel to ensure free access to its customers, how does that help improve the bandwidth scarcity?

In fact, now that access to Netflix is free to the consumer, won't his usage go up, thereby worsening the bandwidth scarcity?

Secondly, in the current scenario, since Netflix is not free, and users pay more for using more data on Netflix, the telco gets more revenue which can be used to purchase more spectrum and resolve the bandwidth issue.

So, which is the better option to address the scarce bandwidth issue? Airtel Zero or the current scenario???

[Jaggu]

Originally Posted by alpha1

High prices attributed to capitalism?

Not really but capitalism involves realistic pricing.

On the contrary - the telecom sector has heavy licenses and regulations, which work to reduce competition and make it an oligopoly.

Coz it is finite resource and Govt needs the revenue since it cannot be thrown out for free.

The higher this monopolistic licensing and regulations, the higher the prices in that part of the world.

This i would not agree, but i don't have that kind of insights to regulations and licensing of these countries to debate

I think you are under an impression that US and EU are capitalist countries?
Very far from truth!

Closer to capitalism. You can guide me to the ones that are more closer and then we can check data price there.

Let the seller make losses and get out of business.

To quote:

Business aka commercial activity.
"firms who want to do business with Japan"
synonyms: trade, trading, commerce, buying and selling, dealing, traffic, trafficking, marketing, merchandising, bargaining; More
trade considered in terms of its volume or profitability.
"how's business?"
a commercial house or firm.
plural noun: businesses
"a catering business"
synonyms: firm, company, concern, enterprise, venture, organization, operation, undertaking, industry, corporation, establishment, house, shop, office, bureau, agency, franchise, practice, partnership, consortium, cooperative, conglomerate, group, combine, syndicate; More

Sole purpose of a business is to make profit, and if it makes only losses then it will not be called a business, it would be a charity.

If Bigbazaar and Indian retailers make hue and cry about GOSF - let flipkart and amazon get bankrupt!

Come on! aren't we digressing way off. But for argument sake, these days retailers do compete offline by offering "better this offer" during such times. That is bold competition and hats off to them.

[Pri2]

Originally Posted by alpha1

High prices attributed to capitalism?
Not at all.
On the contrary - the telecom sector has heavy licenses and regulations, which work to reduce competition and make it an oligopoly.
The higher this monopolistic licensing and regulations, the higher the prices in that part of the world.
I think you are under an impression that US and EU are capitalist countries?
Very far from truth!
Let the seller make losses and get out of business.
If Bigbazaar and Indian retailers make hue and cry about GOSF - let flipkart and amazon get bankrupt!

I can't believe that people still don't get that providing something at lower price or even for free is SELLER's choice. And cannot be subject to any regulation.

You are over complicating things. Net Neutrality = treating all online traffic equal. All sites / apps/ services etc should be accessibly to you for the same price and speed that you had paid for. If I have paid for a data pack from Airtel, I should be able to access everything on the internet without discrimination.

Airtel can provide 2 GB of data free every month or charge Rs 1000 for it. That wouldn't be against net neutrality as customers would still be able to access the internet for the same cost whether free or ridiculously expensive.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Pri2

You are over complicating things. Net Neutrality = treating all online traffic equal. All sites / apps/ services etc should be accessibly to you for the same price and speed that you had paid for. If I have paid for a data pack from Airtel, I should be able to access everything on the internet without discrimination.

It is still same price.
But Flipkart is paying for it, instead of you.

As for the speed part - Airtel has made it clear, there won't be any priority because in Airtel's account books, they will make money whether it comes from Pri2's data plan or Flipkart's expense books.

[Pri2]

Originally Posted by alpha1

It is still same price.
But Flipkart is paying for it, instead of you.

As for the speed part - Airtel has made it clear, there won't be any priority because in Airtel's account books, they will make money whether it comes from Pri2's data plan or Flipkart's expense books.

The pricing maybe same for Airtel but not the consumer. For someone accessing the internet though airtel, access to Amazon is more expensive compared to Flipkart if it is a part of the free internet zone.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by alpha1

I can't believe that people still don't get that providing something at lower price or even for free is SELLER's choice. And cannot be subject to any regulation.

No, it is not that simple. People keep comparing it to tollfree, which is not correct.

If it was as simple as tollfree number, here is how it would work. If I am an app maker registered with Airtel Zero, any customer on Airtel, Vodafone, Tata-telecom, BSNL, Idea, Aircel, office/home Wifi, etc., should get free data access. That is how tollfree phone works.

Also unlike tollfree numbers, apps are used worldwide. When an tiny app maker publishes an app in a Rhode Island server, he knows people from all over the world have equal chance of getting to his app. But a plan like Airtel Zero suddenly incentivizes their customers to stay away from any app that doesn't register with Airtel. There are 1000s of ISPs around the world, if each one starts incentivizes their customers to stay away from apps that don't register with them, small app makers will die a quick death. This is not good for the customers at all, such monopolistic practice should be regulated.

Originally Posted by srishiva

When a call is to be placed, the reason and type of call is provided in the initial message. Everything happens based on this.

Now you are talking about voice, obviously it will get better QoS. But our contention is about user data.

Originally Posted by srishiva

Whether various applications do this, I am not sure. If carriers had their own apps, they would always do this.

Carrier might giver higher QoS to their own apps running on user Data, I'll give you that. Why would the ISP give better QoS to youtube video packet over TBHP text packet? Both are TCP packets and should be treated equally.

Originally Posted by srishiva

Mobile networks do respect QoS, their own IP network upto their gateway not beyond that. You can look up QoS in mobile networks.

All networks respect QoS for their own payload and signalling traffic. But they have no need to respect QoS of user data. In fact, it can be detrimental. I mark all my web traffic as EF, should my web traffic get higher priority over others? In actuality, routers would just strip away the DSCP bit before passing the packet further.

Originally Posted by kvish

I think this argument is confusing. How does going to different ISPs for your business needs go against net neutrality.

Hmm, I don't how else I can explain... I have already paid for my pipe, why should I pay again to every customer's ISP.

Originally Posted by StarrySky

This is not strictly true in case of LTE. PSTN may be circuit switched, but there is no circuit switching in LTE.

LTE is for data, obviously it will be packet switched.

Data is always packet switched, it is really the network layer and above we should consider. It doesn't really matter whether it is built over Ethernet or E1 or ADSL.

Originally Posted by StarrySky

So if your browser can negotiate two different "PDP Context" for two different tabs, then the two tabs can have different QoS as well. If you use T-BHP app and YouTube app separately, they will quite possibly use different "PDP Context" and have different QoS.

How does the browser know to negotiate anything? Let's say I make my mobile phone as a wifi hotspot and connect my laptop to Internet. If I start Chrome to connect to youtube, how does Chrome know about PDP Context negotiation? If I write my own client to talk to a website [I do that a lot], I know nothing about PDP Context negotiation. I just open a socket to port 80 of the destination.

Originally Posted by StarrySky

I'll give the most basic example on how those channels are used for browsing and streaming. If you start a browser, it can negotiate a QoS with the mobile network (PDP Context 1).

I am a network programmer and I know browsers operate at socket level, which is just above TCP layer. Browsers won't know how to negotiate anything other than an encryption cipher suite for SSL handshake.

Originally Posted by StarrySky

What will happen when you start streaming is that both your browser and your YouTube app will be allocated DCH with different data rates (this is simply because the mobile cannot use FACH and DCH at the same time). After your video session is done and your usage pattern goes back to the brower pattern, the network can remove both DCHs and ask the mobile to use only FACH. If you now start streaming a new video, then the DCHs need to be setup again - which takes some time. This is why you sometimes see "Buffering" when you start streaming and then not afterwards.

All this happens so far away from the TCP socket, which is used by both RTSP (youtube) and HTTP (any website). How does the mobile network know whether I am using RTSP or HTTP application when I open the TCP socket? People who write mobile applications know nothing about PDP Context negotiations. They just use web services or open TCP sockets to communicate.

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by Pri2

You are over complicating things. Net Neutrality = treating all online traffic equal. All sites / apps/ services etc should be accessibly to you for the same price and speed that you had paid for. If I have paid for a data pack from Airtel, I should be able to access everything on the internet without discrimination.

Airtel can provide 2 GB of data free every month or charge Rs 1000 for it. That wouldn't be against net neutrality as customers would still be able to access the internet for the same cost whether free or ridiculously expensive.

Well said, this is the most logical and correct explanation about net neutrality without vested interests (eCommerce providers) making it seem like a fight for freedom, or fight against big business controlling laymen.

Again I ask, why I the private customer, individual fight for the eCommerce companies? I am getting my internet from the ISP, say Airtel. Airtel and I have a contract where in i pay x amount and get y GB of data, along with that Airtel says, I will give you free access to my recommended sites, and higher speeds at my sites, so that is beneficial to me , airtel and the website provider. What background deal airtel is cracking with each website is not my business, why should I bother if smallecomercesite.com is getting low traffic or bandwidth?

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

Again I ask, why I the private customer, individual fight for the eCommerce companies? ..... What background deal airtel is cracking with each website is not my business, why should I bother if smallecomercesite.com is getting low traffic or bandwidth?

Because Airtel is picking the vendors for you. Eventually, you will start buying only from vendors blessed by Airtel, which may not get the best deal for you.

[srishiva]

Very much OT but with http browsing, its considered as background data so the QoS will be lower.

If we talk about streaming (live streaming is higher,buffered is lower etc) it will have higher QoS ( we are talking about streaming applications) not the one that you might do with a browser. When we talk about QoS etc, it has nothing to do with TCP or not. Its the type of traffic only.

Call initiated (or session) does not mean voice call, it could be for any type of session. Bearer setup is always done by user whether outgoing or in response to something incoming.

Got in between and missed on the overall context of the thread.

[apachelongbow]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Because Airtel is picking the vendors for you. Eventually, you will start buying only from vendors blessed by Airtel, which may not get the best deal for you.

Thanks. Just asking. Will it not ensure all vendors try and comply with airtel to reach me? Like how all app vendors complied with IOS to reach apple consumers..

[zenren]

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

Again I ask, why I the private customer, individual fight for the eCommerce companies? I am getting my internet from the ISP, say Airtel. Airtel and I have a contract where in i pay x amount and get y GB of data, along with that Airtel says, I will give you free access to my recommended sites, and higher speeds at my sites, so that is beneficial to me , airtel and the website provider. What background deal airtel is cracking with each website is not my business, why should I bother if smallecomercesite.com is getting low traffic or bandwidth?

Currently, you might be paying x amount for y GB of data. Once the preferred companies are freely accessible, it would a bigger advantage for them if the x becomes 10x and people are forced to completely depend on the free offerings thereby increasing their user base and traffic. So these companies could eventually strike a deal with Airtel where they would compensate Airtel with the loss in revenue due to the increase by means of increased payment from their side.

Eventually, the internet for the common man would be a small fraction of the free sites that these companies provide. Only a few would be able to afford the "full pack" with no restrictions.

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

Will it not ensure all vendors try and comply with airtel to reach me? Like how all app vendors complied with IOS to reach apple consumers..

It depends on how big and distributed these vendors are. For example, we have several providers in India like Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance, BSNL and so on. So these companies would need to strike deals with each of these companies to ensure they reach out to the entire base in India. Now imagine the plight of a company that caters to customers world wide. They would need to have deals with top 4-5 operators in each country. Such an expenditure can only be afforded by the biggest players out there and would lead to monopoly in the market which is outlawed in US and Europe.

[ashua]

Originally Posted by apachelongbow

Well said, this is the most logical and correct explanation about net neutrality without vested interests (eCommerce providers) making it seem like a fight for freedom, or fight against big business controlling laymen.

Again I ask, why I the private customer, individual fight for the eCommerce companies? I am getting my internet from the ISP, say Airtel. Airtel and I have a contract where in i pay x amount and get y GB of data, along with that Airtel says, I will give you free access to my recommended sites, and higher speeds at my sites, so that is beneficial to me , airtel and the website provider. What background deal airtel is cracking with each website is not my business, why should I bother if smallecomercesite.com is getting low traffic or bandwidth?

Let's say smallecommercesite.com is an Indian site that can provide a better service/experience to you if you tried it. But because the largeecommercesite is faster to load and your bandwidth counter does not move when you access it over Airtel network you never end up going to it.
And since you and everyone on Airtel is discouraged thus to go to the smallecommercesite.com, it will never even get a chance to become a medium or another large ecommerce site.

Who gained?
Airtel: It got money from largeecommercesite.com to keep you from going to the small one or discouraging you.
largeecommercesite.com : Because you remained with them and continued to give them your business regardless of them offering an inferior experience/service.


Whose loss was it?
1. Yours: Because you never got a chance to try something better and maybe more innovative.
2. smallecommercesite.com : Because they never got a level playing field that net neutrality gave them which maybe caused them to close shop.
3. The Worlds (and this is THE BIGGEST LOSS if you ask me): Because we lost an innovation and will end up losing countless others if this continues.


Remember, every large e-commerce site was once small.