Any regulation by Govt on this matter should be to only ensure that the ISP's stick to the general definition of net neutrality and not to arm twist them into making unfavourable exceptions even if its in favour of end users or service providers
All bytes should be treated equally and ISP should transmit a byte as long as somebody is covering the bandwidth and connectivity costs and that is covered as part of the bandwidth purchase by the service provider and the internet subscription by the end user. All their inter network connectivity costs are being covered as part of the costs paid by the service provider and the end user. There is no reason to demand for extra charges or treat the bytes of a service provider differently than others.
Through such an inter network connectivity arrangement, the ISP has already agreed for transfer of bytes between the two networks. It is a mutually agreed upon and profitable relationship between the two network operators, so the ISP cannot go and ask a service provider on the other network to pay them a fee for sending packets through his network since he is already paying the connectivity and bandwidth costs to his source network provider nor ask the customer on his side to pay an additional fee on top of the cost of the internet subscription for giving him the "privilege" of allowing a service provider on another network. These are all implicit with the arrangement. The ISP is at this own discretion to choose not to have inter connectivity relationships at the risk to their own business. There is no justification for an ISP to say that a service provider is choking their network because that simply means that the ISP has a problem in his network.
Regarding Airtel Zero kind of programs, in the purest form, they are not really a violation of net neutrality IMO since the ISP is still collecting the cost of the bandwidth regardless of the service with the only difference being who is paying the cost. However there are couple of concerns with such programs.
1. Such programs may lead to potential violation of the neutrality in future, but that is possible only when a operator has sufficient incentive to degrade the performance of non participating service providers. With proper neutrality measures in place, even if a service provider is willing to cover the cost of bandwidth for their customers, there would be no incentive for the operators themselves to show bias. If that cannot be achieved, then these kind of programs should not be allowed.
2. The anti-competitive aspects of it. If Flipkart is free on Airtel, A user might be compelled to use Flipkart over Amazon or snapdeal and Airtel over Vodaphone or other operators. This however is still no different from similar kind of practices in offline businesses and should be treated the same as those and there is no need to tie Net neutrality with that. If there is a need for legislation on what constitutes anti-competitive business practices and how to deal with it, it should be kept separate from the core of net neutrality.
What the heck... You are saying something on the first para then you yourself are opposing it in the 2 points that you wrote.
I tell you what, the legislations, cases, rules, bills etc take a long time in India. And those rules are mostly in favor of the one that have money to spend. You are being so naive in your assumption that those telecom companies would protect your interests once they get there way.
In case whatever you said is implemented then I have no doubt that the telecom companies would use this loophole to there advantage. And you or anybody else won't be able to do anything about that. We all know how bad FUP is.
Do you know who introduced that?
Your loving airtel did.
We all know it's wrong. There is no such thing in foreign countries. But, just because of pure greed and power nobody including you could stop airtel from implementing that.
Looking at there track records, why should the situation be allowed to get out of our hands?
I don't trust the telecom companies. I dont want them to tell me what to use and what not. I want to take that decision myself. I want to keep it simple. I don't want to give a single extra penny to those thugs.
Flipkart went back on its decession to support airtel. They did it for a reason. It's because they knew it was wrong in the long term.
If the telecom companies are so concerned about providing its consumers cheap or low cost internet. Then just reduce the price of your ridiculous internet plans. And improve your pathetic speed for everything. That set.
Why should I give even a single penny extra for those shitty services provided by the telecom operators?
The OTT players earn money because they have made the product or app. And the users are buying the bandwidth or internet plan from there own money to access those apps. So, what's the problem with it?
The telecom operators are getting paid for the internet or data already. Just because of greed or because of gullible people like you who are willing to beleive them, I am not ready to take the risk. Nor I need too.
And yes I don't care about people sleeping hungry on roads. For that the government is there. We pay huge taxes to them. They need to do there work. For you I can't just being those hungry poor people home and start to take care of them.
Be practical. Everybody does what is right for him or his family. And I dont see anything right in what airtel is trying to do.