This is ofcourse , a blatant violation of net neutrality and has caused an uproar here in India . However they're trying to make this into a Rich vs poor thing by saying that banning zero rating is to deny poor people access.
The worse thing is that both Google and Facebook are in support of this scheme even though they support net neutrality in the US. Facebook was already in violation with their Internet.org scheme but I didn't expect this from Google.
If Airtel's experiment succeeds I think that this could be replicated across the world and destroy the very character of the internet.
The other problem is that zero rating is a bit of a trickier debate since it's not the customer who's paying.
We need to force the tech majors to take a stand against this. What can be done to force them ?
This plan is the following - if you take Airtel Zero, you cannot access any other website. Period. That's right, no option to pay for other websites at all. Once you opt-in, your web is restricted. This is not like the plans for poor we already have, where you pay little or nothing for some websites, but can use regular plans to access rest of the web. With the new Airtel Zero, you waive off the rights to rest of the web as soon as you opt-in.
This is a net neutrality debate. We have plans for poor, this is not it.
That certainly puts things into perspective when talking about the downside to requiring people pay for bandwidth even if the app-owners want them to have it for free...
I've heard all kinds of silly things like net neutrality wouldn't allow end-user set QOS. Or that it wouldn't allow ISPs to throttle people who exceed "acceptable use" limits.
As for the proposal in the OP I don't see the issue with it. Plenty of companies make arrangements (usually physical co-location of servers) with ISPs so that certain content doesn't count against users data caps.
That could get abusive if the ISP had a very low data cap but coincidentally services also owned by the ISP were off cap. But in most situations they are just giving you something extra, not taking away as ISPs were doing with targeted throttling.
This is a HUGE assumption. I would go out on a limb to say that that's what is happening. Consider this - an telecom firm named "UnfAir Tel" and e-commerce firm called "Glitch Kart" enter into a zero rating deal. Now, Glitch Kart is asked to pay UnfAir Tel some money to be called a Zero partner. Glitch Kart passes on these costs to the consumer (on every product) - minute costs like 20c per product. So consumers now pay to keep Glitch Kart accessible without Internet AND UnfAirTel for providing NO extra service.
> It might be anti-competitive and an abuse of market power, but unless the traffic was prioritized over other traffic how is this a violation of net neutrality?
I think the Norwegian Communications Authority explains this best.
> At first glance it may appear that all traffic is handled equally in this charging model, but the fact is that once you have used your quota, the traffic that is exempted will be allowed to continue, while all other traffic will be throttled or blocked. This is clearly a case of discrimination between different types of traffic.
http://eng.nkom.no/topical-issues/news/net-neutrality-and-ch...
So in a sense it's a form of binary prioritization: 0 or 1.
I have seen charges of 2G data double in course of last two years or so. The picture, if Airtel goes through it, is very grim. They would force every major corporation to pay to allow access to their website / app for 'free' and the normal Internet packs would become very expensive to afford. I am sure most telcos would follow the same suit, once they get a nod.
Free markets are great when you have a large number of relatively equal agents interacting freely. E.g., the classic farmer's market, or the stock trading pits of old. But the more you drift from those conditions, the less effective they are.
Here, with large, rich players paying for access to poor, mostly-uneducated individuals, it's a situation ripe for abuse. Especially because those individuals won't have access to the regular Internet to help them sort through what they're seeing.
I expect a lot of what they get will be from the sort of people who exploit the poor, the online equivalent of payday lenders and debt relief scam artists.
In that sense, the market isn't about providing fairness to all players but for allocating talent and abilities.
In regards to exploiting the poor, I think that sort of mind-set often results in a dangerous kind paternalism. Protecting the poor is an excuse used for all sort of policies that often keep the poor down (cigarette taxes, drug policy, etc).
By which logic, free-market approaches are also never realistic.
> On the surface it is unfair to those under 6 feet tall but the NBA, being a market [...]
Your example doesn't make much sense to me. The actual market involved is the labor market, which does indeed have a large number of relatively equal agents interacting freely. Known labor market failures occur when that's not the case. (E.g., company towns, employer collusion.) But when it does work well, it both provides a kind of fairness and also acts as a reasonably good way to allocate talents and abilities.
My opinion is that this should have nothing to do with the "net neutrality" debate. It's just shifting more costs onto the host, instead of the user. The host already pays for all the servers and outgoing bandwidth, why is it a problem if they also pay for the other side of the connection?
And if any website can opt-in to this arrangement, then there is nothing anti-competitive about it at all.
No - that is unlikely in the extreme. The UK has had zero-rated data and text messages for over 5 years and it has had no impact at all.
Why exactly?
The crux of this argument seems to be "having more money makes you better able to compete"
This falls out of free market capitalism. Its not going to go away without regulation, and it seems like doing so will disadvantage swathes of poor people for questionable benefits.
I do see the argument, but I think its quite far out of touch with reality, as a lot of these 'internet rights' and silicon valley engineers seem to be.
In regards to the swathes of poor people, we can use a similar situation (though hyperbolic) to compare, and that is nestle giving out free formula to breastfeeding mothers in poor countries, and that couldnt hurt anyone because they were giving it away, right?
For example, IBFAN claim that Nestlé distributes free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation, the family must continue to buy the formula.[1]
Regulation is definitely needed when a company does the equivalent of dumping or a predatory pricing scheme. Claiming that "poor people will be hurt" is missing the point that the robber baron isn't giving them free bread to feed them, they give them free bread to close down the other bakeries and then charge them for their daily bread in any way they want.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott#Baby_milk_i...
Regardless as to motive, nothing will change to the people who benefit from this...
I'm not sure what competition it will be stifling either. We seem to be assuming that this is already a fairly balanced industry without gigantic monopolies - which is just untrue.
I can see the philosophical argument, I just can't be in favour of it when all we want at the core is to do is hold something back that has benefit.
If “Airtel Zero” were implemented as is, then “poor” people would only see the apps / contents that the people with the money are willing to give them. That degree of dependency borders on modern slavery. I would rather see mobile data made free for everyone.
It's probably why this is even an issue in the first place. In richer countries, companies simply expect their customers to have a decent connection.
And, as in India, the advocates of the interests of the wealthy and corporations in the US like to promote zero rating as a thing that is good for the poor, with AEI promoting it as a tool to "narrow the digital divide". [0]
[0] http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/zero-rating-narrowin...
> At first glance it may appear that all traffic is handled equally in this charging model, but the fact is that once you have used your quota, the traffic that is exempted will be allowed to continue, while all other traffic will be throttled or blocked. This is clearly a case of discrimination between different types of traffic.
Now, if this is so altruistic and for benefit of all - I would make three "requests" from the telecoms.
1. Telcos should not prevent ANY app/website or any other service from being registered on the zero rating platform.
2. Telcos should post every detail of their financial deal with zero rating partners public. Essentially, I would like to know if a zero rating partner is paying for this affordability or are these costs passed on to the consumer in secret.
I am sure since this is for the good of everyone, telcos would have no problem agreeing to these two reasonable requests.
[0] http://eng.nkom.no/topical-issues/news/net-neutrality-and-ch...
http://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/media-centre/bharti-airtel...
and their clarification on the Airtel Zero
http://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/media-centre/bharti-airtel...
I feel Zero rating can be a boon or a death knell for small startups based on Airtel decide to charge per GB of data. I don't think it about restricting certain sites, its about giving the option to peoples to be able to access certain services without having to recharge. I am not sure if Airtel have a sinister design behind this at the moment.... Its more of wait and watch, keep your fingers crossed.
1. Zero rating is good for customers. If Flipkart offers zero rating app, then other competitors like Amazon, Ebay, Snapdeal etc. too are forced to improve their service over Flipkart, or provide Zero Rating for them also. (But from a Business perspective, this can be bad).
2. Net Neutrality is a different thing. But here the telecom operators are confusing people with NN and ZR, tricking the users to believe that they are going to get internet for free once ZR is active. No, it's not like that. They are different things.
I believe that ZR for basic communication apps (like WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, Skype etc.) is an essential thing to do.
But still maintaining Net Neutrality is very very important.
This is probably more complicated. While large companies will have to follow suit and probably buy-in into the ZR deal of large telcos, startups and small buisnesess will essentially be cut off from (potential) customers.
For a small company, it will become a huge challenge to enter such markets - both logistically and financially, so in the end there will be no more Internet for the customers but only FacebookGoogleEbayNet...
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebo...
Basically Facebook goes into local carriers and makes an agreement to the effect that users can reach 0.facebook.com for free on their network. They've now started adding other sites as well to that 'free tier'.
I imagine Facebook is paying something to the carriers for this, though at the very start it may just be seen as a competitive advantage by the carrier so perhaps not.
I actually find this practice super disturbing and find the naming of it as 'internet.org' even more so. The Internet is great because of the very opposite of this type system.
Say in an alternate reality Friendster did this a decade ago, would Facebook even exist if people had to pay to access it? Is that a state of the world we are comfortable with?
I very much understand the arguments towards the utility of the internet (even Facebook) to the poor and marginalized, but this isn't the right way to do it.
I may be naive but I kind of agree. I also think zero rating sounds great in theory. The alternative is that people cannot access at all? Can you post some arguments of why it is bad? Net neutrality doesn't tell me anything. Why would I as a consumer care about that?
