Ache din are here, TRAI is planning to put usage fee on WhatsApp, Viber & the likes

[avi]

If I was, any new thing developing in India, I would have reported here by bashing congress or any other party. I just find it irritating that we come here on this forum for tech news, not to read about politics(except for politics section which I don't even touch anyways).

This is a techno-political news. If you have issues with the title, feel offended, please report it, mods will do the needful.

And secondly, I am mocking BJP's campaigning slogan, which is now a majority of NDA led Gov. Why do you think I hate Modi? I love him in all possible ways

 

[Sobirvs]

This is a techno-political news. If you have issues with the title, feel offended, please report it, mods will do the needful

Don't need to report it. Mods already did the needful. They "featured" this thread.

 

[onlyravi]

LOL.. What next? I am not surprised though. These telcos can stoop even lower.
Aren't we paying for the pathetic GPRS/3G plans anyway?

Pay for every group that you are a admin or member
Or maybe pay more if you use an expensive handset like Note3 or IPhone5s and pay less if you are using some chinese handset.
Or wait... the best one....
30% discount for particular caste
20% for some other
and so on....
Pathetic.... We are still struggling to get decent connectivity here... forget about decent speeds or fair charges.....
Govt should prioritize on spreading the connectivity.... Is this such big rocket science for our politicians to not to understand....

 

[vyral_143]

Don't need to report it. Mods already did the needful. They "featured" this thread.

Thread getting 'featured' is automatic after n number of posts are there in a thread (where n=4 or 5 - @Renegade can confirm). Nothing to do manually by mods for featuring a thread.

 

[asingh]

Is this such big rocket science for our politicians to not to understand....

Honestly, yes.

 

[Party Monger]

There are so many of these apps out there, its impossible to charge them!

And achhe din makes total sense. Governance doesnt include entertaining retarded ideas like these, unless its Achhe din for the Mobile companies.

 

[ayanavish]

Govt should prioritize on spreading the connectivity.... Is this such big rocket science for our politicians to not to understand....

It's not about politicians understanding. Give them money and they will understand the loopholes in every rocket science.

Telecom is a mine of scams. Seems like one more scam brewing up under the surface. The postal sector would have followed suit had that been under private players.

 

[newway01]

just one more reason to move from this country

 

[Rave]

Its funny also to see how "would be" profits are termed as "loss". It would be interesting to see the "Profits" telcos make by forcefully subscribing people to useless VAS and other crappy data plans

 

[alekhkhanna]

just one more reason to move from this (stupid?) country

Errrr.. We still pay less than our Western counterparts for Data/Voice/SMS.
And again, been on Airtel UP(E) for the past 5 years or so. No issues when it comes to 3G (long time user; since Airtel had a tie up with Idea in UP for 3G). Always >800kBps (>6.4 Mbps) download speeds. Agreed, it should be more, but hey, I am a part of the generation when mobiles were still a novelty, so I feel these are pretty good. Can stream 720p easily. Good coverage in terms of 3G signal (have set my phone to 3G only mode). Had intermittent issues with call drops and the like, shift to 2G signals intermittently --> no drops anymore. Pretty much satisfied.
On the topic at hand, yeah, too much greed. Nothing new for corporate entities. Didn't you guys read some days back when Nestle was trying to prove that water is NOT a basic human right, trying to buy as much of the trapped water areas (including natural basins) and selling them for a premium ?

 

[Party Monger]

Errrr.. We still pay less than our Western counterparts for Data/Voice/SMS.

Its so easy to compare rates without taking into account the cost of operation and the quality of service and support. Its significantly less in India. 2g licenses were given away for cheap and the penetration in numbers is pretty high too.

 

[Vince]

Just wondering, but how will a telco charge an app? can they block a specific app on their network?
if so, people will just move to a network that won't charge the app creator. with portability becoming easier these days.

 

[onlyravi]

They can identify if a customer is using a particular app but blocking is not that easy.
App creaters will give 1000 other options. Like ability to change app name or some id which helps to identify that app and so on....
These idiots have not yet learnt that any restrictions forced for blocking such things only make the blocked entities more popular and 100s more like them pop up before they can block the existing few ....
There is no fun in discussing this topic also... No way our networks/govts are that capable of doing all this nor can they afford to pay companies who can really do this. End of story....

 

[alekhkhanna]

Its so easy to compare rates without taking into account the cost of operation and the quality of service and support. Its significantly less in India. 2g licenses were given away for cheap and the penetration in numbers is pretty high too.

Quality of service and support ? Really ? Half of the posts of Android Police are now filled with how shitty T-Mobile and Verizon and AT&T are and what kind of assholes the CC peeps behave like ! Everytime I read it, the most unanimous issue I see is the cartelisation of telecom (and broadband). So if TMob is predominant in one area, Verizon will possibly skip that place or limit their experience. Same for broadband.
Totally opposite in India. Every company is eyeing the public. Better rates, good competition. The level of cartelisation isn't as much as seen in the US. And again, my experience with Airtel has been pretty good so far.

 

[Party Monger]

Quality of service and support ? Really ? Half of the posts of Android Police are now filled with how shitty T-Mobile and Verizon and AT&T are and what kind of assholes the CC peeps behave like ! Everytime I read it, the most unanimous issue I see is the cartelisation of telecom (and broadband). So if TMob is predominant in one area, Verizon will possibly skip that place or limit their experience. Same for broadband.
Totally opposite in India. Every company is eyeing the public. Better rates, good competition. The level of cartelisation isn't as much as seen in the US. And again, my experience with Airtel has been pretty good so far.

Not saying USA doesnt have its own problems, but the issues are because of higher standards and along with higher speeds. And the costs of running an operation there are higher too.

 

[djmykey]

An article that agrees with what I said in my post here
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/featur...ress-whatsapp-even-if-consumers-suffer-572283

Also I would like to point out that instead of crying foul over such things, tele co's shud clean thier background first. Incorrect billing, wrong scheme getting applied, underhanded advert tactics, flash messages and what not crap they pull over consumers to earn money is something I wanna protest about if they wanna cry foul over losing revenue to Mobile Messaging apps.

 

[6pack]

I read in some paper that internet bandwidth in India is less than 50% utilized. And the govt is considering adding even more fibre to Bsnl. Don't know what they'll do with extra capacity if they're not ready to let consumers use it.

Edit: do these chat apps work without internet? These telecom companies act like they give free internet access to these apps users.

 

[swatkats]

@6pack I think that was BSNL's buying bandwidth from Bangladesh to reduce dependence on TATA.

 

[djmykey]

I read in some paper that internet bandwidth in India is less than 50% utilized. And the govt is considering adding even more fibre to Bsnl. Don't know what they'll do with extra capacity if they're not ready to let consumers use it.

Edit: do these chat apps work without internet? These telecom companies act like they give free internet access to these apps users.

Yes.. One of my friend's used to work at a VSNL (Now TATA) datacenter in Pune. He told me he had 100 mbps unused internet bandwidth.. a GB of download used to finish as if it were a 100 kb's. Indian govt will rather waste the B/W but not give it cheaply :|

And dont get me started on the rates of 3G the cellular providers are charging :|

 

[blr_p]

Apart from that, this issue is nothing but one more example of telecos killing net neutrality (not that it's even a concern in India at present). Netflix/YouTube and the likes are feeling the heat in US currently, but they will not be the ones who'll truly be affected. In fact, it can even help them seal their lead for a long time.

killing or trying to kill ? which means they have not killed anything as yet.

Let's stick to india for the moment.

If the ISP's said they will downgrade the QoS of data emanating from designated apps then it would affect net neutrality.

Right now, they are thinking or rather trying to figure out a way to get a cut out of a recent development.

On what basis can they single out, arbitrarily, some apps out of others ?

Charge for amount of data used and speeds, sure. But the type of data passing through ISPs shouldn't be their concern.

Right, every app and the amount of them that want to communicate is always increasing means so will data going through their net. These apps are what will increasingly get people to use their networks.