Team-BHP - The fight for net neutrality is on! Time to reclaim the internet

Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

- Shifting gears (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/)

- - The fight for net neutrality is on! Time to reclaim the internet (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/162694-fight-net-neutrality-time-reclaim-internet.html)

Pay per site plans?
(http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

Pay extra if you want your startup to reach the masses?

This is what telcos planned. But we have to fight to get the internet back

List of all the public documents on Net Neutrality. You can an tweet startups and MPs and ask them to participate. Sign up at http://savetheinternet.in to send mail to TRAI

Copying a shared message

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MP Tathagata Saptpathy believes that we should keep the debate on Net Neutrality apolitical. Read his views here.
Over 1 Lakh responses have gone to TRAI.
MSM Coverage: TIMES NOW debate on Net Neutrality at 9pm IST today.
Celebrity endorsements are coming in on twitter. Shah Rukh Khan, Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Dadlani, Ayushmann Khurana, Gul Panag, Arjun Kapoor and many more!
POLITICAL ENDORSEMENTS Congress, Digvijay Singh, Ajay Maken, Arvind Kejriwal, DMK and many more. Continue to interact with you MPs. Keep up the pressure.

From reddit : How a 9 year old explained net neutrality

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My 9-year old son spends a lot of time online and recently came to me asking what Net Neutrality meant. I explained it the best I could. I just okay with current political events and he had a lot of questions. Had to actually look up some answers.
I recently overheard him explaining it to one of his friends, much better than I could, like this:
Pretend ice cream stores gave away free milkshakes. But you had to buy a straw to drink them. But that's okay, because you still get free milkshakes. One day you're drinking a free milkshake and you look down and the guy that sold you the straw is pinching it almost shut. You can still get your milkshake, but it's really hard and takes a lot longer.
So you say, "Hey! Stop that!" And the straw guy says, "NO! Not until the ice cream store pays me money." And you say, "But I already paid you money for the straw." And the straw guy says, "I don't care. I just want more money."

Another thought provoking article!
http://aravindet.svbtle.com/appu-and-the-bus-operators

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There was nothing remarkable about the Netapur bus stop — a spot on the side of a dusty, broken road, an hour outside the city. There were no houses or shops nearby. Over the fields within walking distance lay four villages. Six buses stopped there in the morning and evening, carrying villagers who had jobs in the city.
It was on one such morning that passengers first saw Appu. A teenager from one of the nearby villages, he was carrying a metal tray with a few small glasses of tea. “Five rupees”, he would tell anyone who glanced his way. He sold eleven glasses of tea on the first morning, and took the empty glasses and tray back to Sanjay.
Three weeks earlier, Appu had dropped out of school to look for a job. “It’s up to you now,” his grandmother had told him, “to take care of your little sister.” Sanjay, who had a tea stall in the village, had known Appu’s father and offered him a job. Appu was grateful he did not have to work in the fields.
He rose early every day to bring milk and water, served customers and washed glasses. Selling tea at the bus stop was his idea, and Sanjay had agreed to try it out. Appu made sure it was served hot, and the tea was soon popular with passengers.
Six months later, Appu borrowed some money and old pots and pans to start his own tea stall at the bus stop. Shortly after that, he started selling idlis in the morning and samosas in the evening — his sister helped make them when she wasn’t at school. Appu’s tea and snacks were the best in the area and soon people from other places began coming to Netapur to have them.
Appu’s tea stall was two years old now, and that was when his trouble with the bus drivers began. One day the driver of Mukesh Travels, who drove the second bus of the morning, beckoned Appu over.
“The bus gets too crowded with people coming to your tea stall. You have to begin paying us for bringing you these customers,” he said.
Appu was astonished. “But aren’t they already paying you a fare for coming here? Aren’t you making more money if your buses are more crowded?”
“Our passengers used to pay the full fare till the city; the people stopping at Netapur pay less.1 Also, our owner has a restaurant three stops away, and you are taking away his customers.”
The passengers had all got in by then, and it was time to begin moving. “Remember: if you don’t pay us, our bus will not stop at Netapur anymore. The owner is only asking for one-tenth of your revenue, I would pay up rather than fighting this.”, said the driver before setting off.
Appu didn’t worry much initially. There were too many passengers from Netapur and Mukesh Travels could not afford to ignore them. However, a couple of days later, drivers from the other five buses also stopped to demand that Appu pay them. Appu was indignant at this open extortion and refused to pay.
The next morning, the first bus, Bharti Transport, sped past Netapur without stopping. Soon afterwards the Mukesh Travels bus did the same.
At the bus stop, the crowd got larger and restless. When the next bus appeared on the horizon, people started waving at it, but to no avail. Passengers tried yelling and waving at the next three buses to stop but they, too, sped by.
Just behind the last bus of the morning, a car pulled up and a well dressed man stepped out.
“My name is Rajan and I represent the bus owners.”, he told the crowd, “We cannot stop here because people coming to Netapur to have tea are overwhelming our buses2. We can stop here again only if the tea stall pays us one-fifth of its revenue to compensate us for this. I’m sure you all will agree that this is fair.”
An old man interrupted, “Your business is only to drop us where we want to go, not to ask whether we are going to work or to have tea. When you run your route on a government license, we have the right to get on or off at any stop on the route!”
Rajan continued, as if there was no interruption, “This tea stall business runs “over the top3” of our bus service, and it would not exist at all if it weren’t for his free riding on us4. In fact you could say that we deserve as much credit for providing you tea and snacks as he does — how would you come here if we did not bring you here? Yet you only pay us a small fare while you pay him much more for his idlis!5 Is this fair?”
A young woman said, “Bus and food are different things, and we are paying for each its correct market price. In our house we buy grain at one shop and get it milled at another. We pay the grocer the market price for grain, and we pay the miller the market price for milling. We must buy the grain before we can mill it, just as we must take the bus before we can have Appu’s idlis — but this does not give the grocer a right to the miller’s money, nor you a right to Appu’s!”
But Rajan wasn’t done yet. “But we are giving this Appu a service! We are bringing him customers.6 We are only asking that he pay us for our service.”
The old man replied, “Your service is carrying passengers. It’s already paid for by us, the passengers. We are your customers, not Appu. Nice try, but no bidi.”
The other passengers looked oddly at the old man for this strange expression. He was quite old, so they assumed it must be an ancient, forgotten saying.
Rajan frowned. Things weren’t going too well, so he tried another tack. “Buses are getting more crowded every day. How will we pay for new buses7 to reduce the crowding? We have to use our profits to buy more buses. Mr. Mukesh even invests his restaurant profits into buses. So it is in the people’s interest8, not ours, that we make more profits.”
A boy piped in, “If he invests so much, why has the windscreen been broken for the last three years? Your fancy car shows where the money is actually going.” Everyone laughed while Rajan clenched his fists.
Rajan could not contain his frustration any longer. He had a simple job, direct the people’s anger onto Appu and get him to pay. “We are only asking for a level playing field!9 The government has so many rules for buses and for our big restaurants. We are required to ensure good service, cleanliness, safety… all this costs a lot of money. There are no such rules for road-side tea stalls. How can we compete with Appu10 when everything is stacked so heavily in his favour?”
The young woman spoke up again, “Yet, your buses are slow and break down often. Your restaurant serves stale idlis that taste bad, no chutney and costs twice as much11 as Appu’s. Your drivers, conductors and waiters are all rude. On the other hand Appu has never given us reason to complain.”
Appu, who was silent all along, said, “Let them make rules about cleanliness, I’m sure I will satisfy them all. What I don’t have is money to pay you, or time to run around government offices getting permissions and certificates.”
Rajan was now shouting. “Do you know how much we have to pay the government to run our buses? During the last auction of bus routes, they cost too much!12 Now we don’t have money to run buses properly.”
One of the other passengers, a middle-aged man, replied. “When you bid at the auction, didn’t you know that you would have to recover the cost from bus fares? Why did you bid higher than you can afford? Also, this is a matter between you and the government. How are we or Appu responsible for any of this?”
Beads of sweat began to appear on Rajan’s brow. “Perhaps we bid too high, but it has been done. We cannot look back, only forward.”
The middle aged man replied, “If the government agrees that they took too much money from you, they can find a way to give some back. I heard that they have a universal bus service fund, to help you run more buses to rural areas? Why don’t they put some auction money in that and use that to help you buy more buses?”
Rajan was shaking now. These villagers were far better informed than he had bargained for, and he was out of ideas. “Government… While we are solidly behind the government’s ambitious vision of seats for all13,” he stammered, “We are eager to make this happen, but it cannot be achieved by starving the industry of the resources needed to invest in this objective.”
The old man spoke again. “Now that all your hollow arguments have been exposed, you are just saying gibberish and hoping it makes sense. If only the operators spent half as much on improving their services as on lobbyists like you! Go back and tell your bosses that if they can’t serve according their government licenses, they should get ready to lose them!”
As his car started to whisk him away, Rajan rolled down the window for one last try. “Appu sells idlis to terrorists!”14, he yelled.
The villagers jeered the car as it pulled away.

Might be slight OT: BUt, in a parallel world, while most of the service providers are busy curtailing the net neutrality, I wish to thank Reliance CDMA to provide me with absolute free access to twitter. Don't know if Reliance stands to gain any revenue out of it, but for twitter users like me, its a blessing in disguise.
Any reliance CDMA user can have unlimited free access on twitter whether he/she subscribes for an internet pack or not.

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50 രൂപയ്ക്ക് താലി മീല്*സ് ലഭിക്കുന്ന നാട്ടില്* 10 രൂപയ്ക്ക് ഊണ് എന്ന ബോര്*ഡ് കണ്ട് നിങ്ങള്* ഒരു ഹോട്ടലില്* കയറുന്നു. അര മണിക്കൂര്* കാത്തിരുന്നിട്ടും ഊണ് കിട്ടാതെ നിങ്ങള്* ചൂടാവുമ്പോള്* പെട്ടെന്നു കിട്ടണമെങ്കില്* 20 രൂപയുടെ കൂപ്പണ്* എടുക്കണമെന്നു ഹോട്ടലുകാരന്* പറയുന്നു.
ഒടുവില്*, സപ്ലയര്* പാത്രത്തില്* ചോറു മാത്രം നല്*കുമ്പോള്* നിങ്ങള്* കറികള്* ചോദിക്കുന്നു. 10 രൂപയ്ക്ക് ചോറു മാത്രമേ കിട്ടൂ എന്നും കറികള്* ഓരോന്നിനും വേറെ 10 രൂപ വീതം നല്*കണമെന്നും ഹോട്ടലുകാരന്* പറയുമ്പോള്* നിങ്ങള്* പണി കിട്ടിയത് മനസ്സിലാക്കുന്നു. 10 രൂപ കൊടുത്ത് കറി വാങ്ങിയെന്നിരിക്കട്ടെ, കുറച്ചു കൂടി കറി ചോദിക്കുമ്പോള്* വീണ്ടും അഞ്ചു രൂപ കൂടി നല്*കണമെന്നു ഹോട്ടലുകാരന്* പറയുമ്പോള്* അത് എട്ടിന്റെ പണിയാണെന്നു നിങ്ങള്* തിരിച്ചറിയുന്നു. ഒടുവില്* ഇഷ്ടപ്പെട്ട കറികള്* കൂട്ടി ഊണു കഴിച്ചിറങ്ങുമ്പോള്* 10 രൂപയുടെ ഊണ് എന്ന ബോര്*ഡു കണ്ടു കടയില്* കയറിയ നിങ്ങളുടെ പോക്കറ്റില്* നിന്നും 250 രൂപയെങ്കിലും പോയിട്ടുണ്ടാവും. ഇവിടെ നിങ്ങള്*ക്കു രണ്ടു വഴികളേ ഉള്ളൂ. ഒന്ന്, വെറും 10 രൂപ മുടക്കി ചോറു മാത്രം കഴിച്ചു ശീലിക്കുക. രണ്ട്, 250 രൂപ ചെലവിട്ട് ഇഷ്ടമുള്ള കറികള്* കൂട്ടി ഊണു കഴിക്കുക.
നെറ്റ് ന്യൂട്രാലിറ്റി എന്നാല്*, 50 രൂപയ്ക്ക് ലഭിക്കുന്ന താലി മീല്*സ് ആണ്. എയര്*ടെല്* സീറോ 10 രൂപയുടെ ഊണും.
‪#‎SaveTheInternet‬, ‪#‎NetNeutrality‬

Here is a post by Malayalee Journalist Berly Thomas. Apologies, posting it as is.

Translation -
You go to a place where you get thali meals for Rs 50. There you see a board that says Meals for Rs 10. You get in there. Wait for 30 mins. When you get angry, you are told that you need to pay Rs 20 for speedy service. Then The waiter serves you just rice and for each curry, you are required to pay Rs 10. For an extra round of curry, you need to pay Rs 5.
So your options are pay Rs 10 and have just the rice or pay about Rs 250 and have all that you desire. Net neutrality is the Rs 50 Thali meals while airtel zero is the Rs 10 wala meal.

Am glad the public took this up rather than the media who would sugar coat this pill to say why airtel is doing public service.

Just wanted to add my two cents: Telecom companies are running a monopoly. They would do anything to save their back side. I do expect some rather weird policies to come up in the future to make you a bonded slave.

Let me give you two examples from the US.
1) In the telecom industry out here there are 2 very major players covering all the country and two minor players covering almost 70% with so so network. The pricing schemes were ridiculous.
An example: You buy a iphone for 200 bucks with a two year contract. Your monthly bill would be in the range of $80 - 110 with limits on call - text usage and data usage. At the end of two years apple comes with another carrot of a new product and you do the whole drama again.

Along comes Tmobile. You buy the iphone outright for $700. You get a plan of $45 unlimited everything(Data of 3gb after which your on low speed data). This got the industry to wake up as tmobile outright advertised this - Bring your old device from another carrier. We will help you break the contract.

Result: The carriers have lowered their pricing quite a bit to the average price of $50 with everyone offering deals.

2) Rooftop solar vs Electric utilities: The utilities in this country are a monopoly in the area. They get tremondous support from the government with tax cuts, write offs for bad investments to outright increase in power prices at every 2-3 year intervals.

Here comes rooftop solar. What they offer is the user installs the system, connects to the grid and has a two way interaction with the grid. He can supply when his production is excess and he can use the grid source at night. So he reduces his bills as any excess which is supplied is net metered(ie the solar owner gets a credit at predetermined value)

This essentially made the utilities all worked up and have made a ridiculous demand which has been accepted by the state. The demand is for a monthly fee of $50 to be connected to the grid. The commison which supported this bill is supported directly and indirectly by the utilities and the new boy in the business(Solar) gets the wrong end of the stick.

Hope such monopolies fail as all they care about is their balance sheet. When ever possible they want new businesses which threaten their existence to fail.

Maddy

I made couple arguments for net neutrality on FB, re-posting it here. My posts are from the POV of a small business that depends on neutral Internet.

I don't need to make up hypothetical scenarios at all. I just have to look back at various instances I have encountered before. Back in 1999, I authored an application development framework which stored some configuration data in a database. I found Oracle DB to be convenient and designed it accordingly. When I finally approached Oracle to get a price for costing, they were not interested in quoting a price. They wanted revenue share. I told them I am using it only to store configuration data, which was originally stored in text files. They gave me two choices (1) Their expert [sic] will go through our source code and figure out the usage pattern and determine a fee (2) They will charge 35% flat of our invoice value. I spent the next few days porting the entire framework into SQLServer7 who charged fixed fee per instance. When a vendor starts dictating terms, it is time to switch vendors. Then, I could switch vendors and escape the noose. But the current scenario doesn't allow that. Here the middleman (ISP) is standing plumb between me and the customer.

Any business person here would agree that you want your vendors on one side and your customers on the other side. But if your vendor [or customer's vendor] is standing between you and your customer, dictating terms, that is indeed a bad scene. Then you are completely at vendor's mercy. He can easily kill your business by changing terms at his will.

Like the old jungle saying, there is an old Internet commerce saying... if you are not being charged by your vendor, then you are not their customer, you are their product. This happened in VAS. Many years ago we along with a marketing firm approached a major mobile PBX vendor for a VAS proposal. He asked to invest 2Cr worth of equipment (capex), manage the opex, and IF there is any revenue, we will get 20% of it. After a brief silence, we asked what is their skin in the game. He said he will give access to his customers (mobile service providers), who in turn will provide access to their mobile users. We walked out and never called back. Never deal with a business partner who takes on zero risk but keeps most of the revenue. Toll free number providers never asked for revenue sharing, they just billed you for the calls your customers made to you. There is no comparison.

In other words, telecom service providers have been treating their paying customers as saleable product for a long time now. And Airtel Zero customers are absolutely just that, product. They will milk this product fully, in all possible ways. They are not doing any charity to poor people. Companies are here to maximise profits, and not to do charity. They will do everything to maximise profit while staying within the statues and regulations. They have no moral obligations to be fair at all. Unfairness is fair game in business. The only way to get companies to do right thing is via law. Net Neutrality law is required because that is the only way to ensure ISPs don't become draconian gatekeepers of Internet economy. Those of us who run small/medium businesses can deal with competition, but we do need is level playing field.

Why do not the telecom operators just raise the prices of data charges/phone rates rather than doing all sorts of these things. I understand their rationale that they have to pay a lot of money for acquiring telecom spectrum and they are doing this to recover their costs. My first guess was they would just increase the prices of data packs. Say if they were offering me 2GB for Rs 100, now they can charge Rs 120/130 for the same thing.

^^Silently, they have done it already. I used a BSNL internet plan which gave me 1GB data for a month for Rs. 139/- a little while back. Then, they reduced the validity to 21 days, then 20 and currently it is 19 days. Similarly, later there was a plan 155 for 28 days validity and 176 for 1 month validity - all 1 GB plans. Couple of months ago, they reduced the validity for 155 to 26 days & that of 176 to 28 days. It is easier and more silent to make plans expensive by reducing the validity rather than increasing price. And if BSNL is doing it, I do not believe that private telcos would be far from it.

I checked the 'Airtel Zero' package. They offer "free" (like somebody had said 'there is no such thing as free lunch' :D) access to Flipkart, Google, Twitter, Hike messenger. Flipkart paid their way in. Google & twitter were added free by Airtel since they are popular. Hike? Could be because it is owned by Airtel founder's son :eek:. I see that Airtel is trying to turn Internet access into DTH model - offer a bouquet of 'free' channels and rest paid channel. Starting a TV channel is expensive business. But starting web site is easy - can be done in 5 minutes. So there are limited number of TV channels but millions of web sites and hence DTH providers can control access to TV channels but cannot for Internet. The attempt of ISPs to control access to Internet will fail.

Online outrage seem to have an effect -Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad bats for net neutrality; final decision to be taken by the DoT

Quote:

"We feel that the Internet is the creation of human mind. Internet should have linkages to the common man in a non-discriminatory manner,"

"It (Internet) belongs to entire humanity and not to a few,"

"We are doing so (coming out with a report) independent of Trai. This is happening for the first time because of the gravity of the matter,"

Here is faking news on this subject - Quoting business loss, camera companies want TRAI to charge users for every selfie taken on phone camera

If the Telcos want more revenues they've got to improve their services in such a way consumers see "value" in them and not by some unethical means such as destroying competition or forcing their views to the public!

India is a mass market and the only way to get profits are by increasing the value and lowering the tariffs and reaping the profits in a long run and not by being unethical.

I'm not even sure when I've got a good 3G speed/coverage with my provider for quite sometime, calls keep dropping randomly, voice quality is pathetic.

When we buy cars, are we charged by the manufacturers additionally depending on the roads we drive?

There is a link where we can submit a petition to TRAI: www.savetheinternet.in

Such acts may also prevent small time business or start-ups from getting into business as they wont be able to pay the "hafta" to all the Telcos, which may also affect our overall economy in the long run.

To me, this appears more like another method of terrorism from the corporate telcos!

Flipkart's pulled out of the Airtel Zero initiative and now supports net neutrality.

Although I am in support of net neutrality, I fail to see how airtel zero is linked to net neutrality. This service is pure economics and nothing to do with internet. This is happening across all industries and part and parcel of our daily lives. Let me give you examples:
1. I receive a free subscription of a Times of India newspaper because I am a subscriber of deccan herald. Is there a problem? Will deccan herald sue times of India as not being neutral? Times of India is paying the newspaper vendor to deliver the same to my doorstep too! Newspaper delivery channels didnt stop my deccan herald newspaper either. Can you ban newspaper delivery agents?.
2. Ebay offered me 2000 cash back on a refrigerator that I bought from a seller. Should we close ebay because other vendors cannot offer cashback?
3. If you take an ola cab ride, there was an offer for free talk time. Would you shut down ola for it?
4. Tollfree numbers, etc etc list goes on.

Its simple, as long as companies have resources to manage their advertizing spends, they will do it. As long as airtel is not preventing access to other websites, I cant see how this can be related to net neutrality.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvish (Post 3685346)

what is your point? I am very confused. Have you understood net neutrality completely?

Pramod

Last night's debate on News Hour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IAqN3_waBA