[#netneutrality] AIB's video: Save The Internet

[Lord Nemesis]

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 believe 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.

Care to explain on what two points I am contradicting myself on? I suggest reading through my entire post again because it is very clear that you did not go through it before you went rambling.

Regarding your arguments. Data limit based trotting (as we know it as FUP) exists in most countries (including US) and its implemented in a more practical manner. Airtel and other ISPs in India merely took it to a stupid level as a means to improve their profits. Even the newly introduced net neutrality rules in US do not address usage based throttling. They only prohibit discriminative throttling

As for regulation, I don't trust the telecom companies and I don't trust the govt to the same extent. Any extensive legislation on the subject even if it looks in favour of net neutrality or in favour of end users initially is going to be full of loopholes that are going to be abused by telecom operators though ambiguous interpretations. Any regulatory framework put in place should be light weight and of limited scope. Do you know that in US, the legislation that ISPs have used for getting concessions while building their high speed internet backbone is the same legislation under which net neutrality is being proposed and the same legislation using which telecom operators are going to use to fight against the net neutrality rules and it is a telecom legislation that was drafted in 1935. Fat laws are easy bend and abuse as required.

Further, understand that Net neutrality has nothing to do with the N different ways the ISP's are screwing customers or about bringing in legislation for doing justice to the customer. It is only about equality of data.

And yeah, please stop using the term OTT. There is no such thing as OTT. Every service provider is paying for the cost for using the network. Nobody is free riding the networks as they make it to be. So there is no OTT.

You are beyond naive if you think Flipkart pulled out of Zero because its "wrong" in the long run. Lets not overrate Flipkart or its management. The sole reason they pulled out is because "right now" their app is being down voted to oblivion with 1 star ratings and it makes prudent business sense to pull out immediately.

As for the Zero program itself, as I said, in its current form, there is no violation of net neutrality. The ISP is charging money whether you browse Flipkart or amazon or snapdeal. The fact that a service provider is paying for your bandwidth does not make it a violation of neutrality as long as the ISP is not discriminating in the quality of service. Business practices and ethics of service providers have nothing to do with net neutrality. if there there is a bad anti-competitive business practice in play here, it is in my view still outside the scope of net neutrality. I am not saying that Zero like programs are desirable, but that they have nothing to do with net neutrality. Don't mix unrelated stuff and try to bring in regulations because that is going to backfire in the long run.

 

[Jasku]

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.

I kind of get your stand now, basically you are for net neutrality, but dont want it to be lopsided for any particular stakeholder, the ISPs are in the best position currently, charging exorbitant rates for bandwidth/limits also striking deals with service providers. I agree with you on the regulatory framework being objective and how it should consider the interests of all stakeholders involved.
The Airtel Zero platform doesn't immediately impact net neutrality, but there is potential in the future that it might, and that is where the regulatory framework should come into play. I was reading an article on Firstpost, that Google had already signed up with the Indian ISP about 3-4 years ago to provide their services upto 1GB data limit, similarly Facebook with Reliance on the Internet.org, which is free on Reliance network, doubt many people are aware of these deals.

@avi There is FUP in the US, but it is such that you never get to cross it, when I was there it 300-350GB never came close to crossing it.

 

[abhi1984]

I have been reading up on this but never found an answer to a query I have. Maybe someone with networking knowledge can help me out:
Given that ISP cache data
https://www.techenclave.com/communi...-unlimited-without-fup-for-1100.140164/page-5)

and rise of CDNs which actually colocate servers with ISPs like Airtel etc,

Many ISPs try and server data out of their own network instead of trying and fetching from the main server at every request. This leads not only to a faster connection but general health of a site too, so that they are not hit too badly. That would mean some part of that 3G 1GB data is actually being served internally by ISP themselves. This is acceptable as all data is still served equally.

We lack the details on the deal between Airtel and FK but what are the chances that this might lead to a lesser allocation of cache space at the ISP or the adjoining CDN for an amazon? I mean, FK is paying Airtel to provide free but it is in Airtel's interest to try and cache as much of FK as they can to try and serve the data within their own network? If there is, what are the chances of this cache allocation affecting if not Amazon then a much smaller site?

That said do we have any public information on what was the deal really between Airtel and FK, other than they will provide it for free? Cause normally devil is in the details.

 

[avi]

That said do we have any public information on what was the deal really between Airtel and FK, other than they will provide it for free? Cause normally devil is in the details.

Nope, those details are not public.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

I have been reading up on this but never found an answer to a query I have. Maybe someone with networking knowledge can help me out:
Given that ISP cache data
https://www.techenclave.com/communi...-unlimited-without-fup-for-1100.140164/page-5)

and rise of CDNs which actually colocate servers with ISPs like Airtel etc,

Many ISPs try and server data out of their own network instead of trying and fetching from the main server at every request. This leads not only to a faster connection but general health of a site too, so that they are not hit too badly. That would mean some part of that 3G 1GB data is actually being served internally by ISP themselves. This is acceptable as all data is still served equally.

We lack the details on the deal between Airtel and FK but what are the chances that this might lead to a lesser allocation of cache space at the ISP or the adjoining CDN for an amazon? I mean, FK is paying Airtel to provide free but it is in Airtel's interest to try and cache as much of FK as they can to try and serve the data within their own network? If there is, what are the chances of this cache allocation affecting if not Amazon then a much smaller site?

That said do we have any public information on what was the deal really between Airtel and FK, other than they will provide it for free? Cause normally devil is in the details.

It would be the other way around. Airtel had not agreed to provide access to flipkart free of cost. Flipkart is paying for the usage in place of the users. So it would actually make sense for Airtel to not cache data for Flipkart.

 

[abhi1984]

It would be the other way around. Airtel had not agreed to provide access to flipkart free of cost. Flipkart is paying for the usage in place of the users. So it would actually make sense for Airtel to not cache data for Flipkart.

I think you are misunderstanding this. It is not free of cost access to Flipkart. Airtel caches FK contents and provides it to users. They can still bill Flipkart by bytes served, if that is what they have agreed. Again its all in the details. Specially around what effect, if any this cache causes on other competing system.

We need a networking guy to at least explain this properly. @swatkats some help here.

 

[swatkats]

It would be the other way around. Airtel had not agreed to provide access to flipkart free of cost. Flipkart is paying for the usage in place of the users. So it would actually make sense for Airtel to not cache data for Flipkart.

Right. If this deal would have gone further, Airtel wouldn't maintain cache of the stuff and bill according to the actual bytes transferred

 

[Lord Nemesis]

The first point is that caching works in the first place when you are dealing with static assets that don't change too fast over a period of time. How much of flipkart assets are static? With the dynamic nature of the content and data, most of the content is without cache control or expires in a short span. So Most of the requests will anyway have to go to their servers.

Secondly, even if assuming that is not the case, How can flipkart audit the traffic that is directed at them if its not coming to them? Do you think they will blindly pay based on any report that Airtel pulls out of its ass?

They will either ask that any caching by Airtel be removed or they will provide their own content/caching servers to Airtel. Supplying content servers makes sense only for businesses that have enough content to justify it. Netflix does this. But flipkart has no need for this. They neither have the volumes or is the data static enough to justify it. They will just ask that any caching at ISP be removed. Even if its not part of the agreement, Airtel will still remove it because when Airtel generates a report, Flipkart will most likely have a way to tally with the data from their own data center(s) and if a request is not coming to their servers, it is not their traffic. Auditing is an important aspect in any such B2B deals and both businesses involved retain the ability to audit and cross verify each others data.

 

[blr_p]

More like they are doing it to save their own asses from the potential fallout of anti-neutrality legislation. Its not much different from how a few politicians who don't know jack about net neutrally are still rallying to garner support of the people through this activism.

Lets face it, most people even on these forums wound't care about net neutrality if its impact is never going to come down to them in the long run. You are going to be impacted, that's why you care.

Youtubers get a check based on the views they attract. So they will oppose anything that threatens those views.

What is being twisted here is the user will be paying more. No, its the content producers that sense they will have to pay, which affects revenues for youtubers. None of this is certain. Its all perceptions and fears.

Really surprised nobody noticed the irony in AIB's position. They got into trouble over the roast episode for things they said. They don't want to be regulated. And here they are doing exactly the same.

That's called hippocrisy but i don't want to call them that

 

[RS4]

What is being twisted here is the user will be paying more. No, its the content producers that sense they will have to pay, which affects revenues for youtubers. None of this is certain. Its all perceptions and fears.

What is being twisted here? Telecom operators want to the consumers to pay more for separate services and they have attempted in the recent past, check out this:

https://www.techenclave.com/communi...r-skype-etc-on-airtel-will-be-charged.171246/

https://www.techenclave.com/community/threads/airtel-withdraws-voip-charges-for-now-after-forcing-trai’s-hand-on-net-neutrality-consultation.171295/

The only reason Airtel did not go through this because they want to legalise this extortion by bribing the TRAI, once its accepted, every company( entire cartel) will follow it and your free market philosophy will fail spectacularly at that point.

Have fun paying 100 rupees for 100MB whatsapp, skype pack along with your 2GB data pack as whatsapp, hike, skype won't be included in regular data packs.

 

[pauldmps]

Youtubers get a check based on the views they attract. So they will oppose anything that threatens those views.

Really? Youtubers get paid? By whom?

What is being twisted here is the user will be paying more. No, its the content producers that sense they will have to pay, which affects revenues for youtubers. None of this is certain. Its all perceptions and fears.

Have you been living under the rock? The whole deal here is that Telecom operators want to charge the users extra for various services which they do not own.
And before you say perception, Airtel & Idea have already started rolling out FB & Whatsapp packs even before the TRAI gave any verdict.

Really surprised nobody noticed the irony in AIB's position. They got into trouble over the roast episode for things they said. They don't want to be regulated. And here they are doing exactly the same.

That's called hippocrisy but i don't want to call them that

What kind of trouble did they get into, except from some FIRs getting filed and a media hoopla that did more publicity than damage?
Do you think the existing laws in India are not enough to regulate what people say online?

 

[blr_p]

Really? Youtubers get paid? By whom?

The ones with the 100k+ subscribers. They get nothing for views, lots of them ?

Have you been living under the rock? The whole deal here is that Telecom operators want to charge the users extra for various services which they do not own.

really ?

And before you say perception, Airtel & Idea have already started rolling out FB & Whatsapp packs even before the TRAI gave any verdict.

yes, discussed the facebook pack pricing. I noted how it was much cheaper if all you need is facebook.

same with whatsapp. I know a couple of people who bought smartphones just to use whatsapp. They will be paying less than i pay for a 3g package.

so tell me what is the problem ?

What kind of trouble did they get into, except from some FIRs getting filed and a media hoopla that did more publicity than damage?

FIRs being filed are not a laughing matter.

 

[blr_p]

What is being twisted here? Telecom operators want to the consumers to pay more for separate services and they have attempted in the recent past, check out this:

https://www.techenclave.com/communi...r-skype-etc-on-airtel-will-be-charged.171246/

https://www.techenclave.com/community/threads/airtel-withdraws-voip-charges-for-now-after-forcing-trai’s-hand-on-net-neutrality-consultation.171295/

The only reason Airtel did not go through this because they want to legalise this extortion by bribing the TRAI, once its accepted, every company( entire cartel) will follow it and your free market philosophy will fail spectacularly at that point.

It did not go through because of the stink that got kicked up over it. So you are implying they are getting TRAI to legalise it ?

TRAI can only make recommendations. Its up to the govt to act. Whether the follow what is said or do something else remains to be seen. If they make things easier for telecos then this might go away.

Have fun paying 100 rupees for 100MB whatsapp, skype pack along with your 2GB data pack as whatsapp, hike, skype won't be included in regular data packs.

So they have singled out the big ones. Others will come up. What do they do next ? try to add those. Then some killer app comes up and they try to add it. Won't work. If this is the case then the networks are already clogged and they are trying to reduce usage by increasing subscriber costs. Its a disincentive and implies the problem is capacity.

if they want more customers then they have to offer incentives. Increasing price will reduce usage. I can see my own behaviour. INitially i got month long packs for a couple of months after that i moved to smaller quotas given my usage was so low. Now i dont even use a pack. I tried to recharge a Rs.9 pack for 25Mb as i thouhgt i would need it, waiting for the sms to arrive confirming the recharge. it never arrived. Did not chase it up. Go to a shop and the recharge is instant.

So i dont use mobile data much at all. Just wifi. Most people if they're not on corporate plans are like that.

 

[drkrack]

Looking at the trend it seems prudent enough to apply for MNP from Airtel, for my single important phone number, which is with me for years. Will give a MNP request to Airtel and migrate to BSNL even before airtel customer service are overwhelmed by MNP requests.

One thing is very clear, their dishonesty is out in open & it is just a matter of time, before they find out & exploit a loophole in the legislation in the current form.

 

[dafreaking]

Really surprised nobody noticed the irony in AIB's position. They got into trouble over the roast episode for things they said. They don't want to be regulated. And here they are doing exactly the same.

That's called hippocrisy but i don't want to call them that

You are mixing up totally different things. Regulation and censoring are not the same.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

yes, discussed the facebook pack pricing. I noted how it was much cheaper if all you need is facebook.

same with whatsapp. I know a couple of people who bought smartphones just to use whatsapp. They will be paying less than i pay for a 3g package.

so tell me what is the problem ?

You have missed the point. The whatsapp pack from Vodaphone will be like a top-up. It requires you to have an internet pack before you add it. When you subscribe to a base 2G/3G pack, you won't be able to use whatsapp. To use whatsapp, you need to pay for the top up. Basically you will be paying extra for the "privilege" of using whatsapp on your existing internet pack. The facebook pack from Airtel is currently a standalone pack, but let me assure you that it won't take much time for them to change it into a add on model. That was their original intention when they introduced similar packs earlier. Initially they are testing the waters by just creating separate packs, but ultimately that is where this is all headed. That is what they mean by Over the top services. They are basically commonly used services on your internet from which they can make more money by making them a privilege to use.

This is going to be the pattern from all ISPs if an anti-neutrality stance is okayed by TRAI.

You subscribe to an Internet Pack. You won't be able to access any of the important social media, streaming, e-com sites. They will demand an additional charge from you for the "privilege" of accessing these sites using the data limit of your internet pack. In addition they will go to all these service providers and force them into million dollar deals for allowing the traffic of the service provider on their networks. They will basically be able to fleece both the end users and service providers at the same time despite both having already paying for the bandwidth that they are using when they access these sites. Further they will be able to rig the plans as they like. Make whatsapp so costly that people will have to resort to SMS again. Then increase the price of SMS once there is no competition. Also, this won't be limited to Mobile internet services. They will do it for wired broadband as well.

This is exactly what happened in US in regard to the Netflix. Comcast asked Netflix to pay up for the privilege of allowing their traffic on to their network. As a digital business they had no choice but to comply in the absence of net neutrality.Comcast still throttled the netflix traffic on all their internet plans in order to coerce users into subscribing for their costlier plans which are "netflix ready".

 

[superczar]

@Lord Nemesis @blr_p
Just give up already, NN is the latest season in the long running I-hate-you-because-everyone-says-so series
On a side note, I am trying to recollect the entities who have starred in the series, Apple, Bose , Airtel are a few to come to the mind, do you remember any other

 

[pauldmps]

The ones with the 100k+ subscribers. They get nothing for views, lots of them ?

Do you have any proof to support your claim. Guys putting videos on YT only make money by sponsorship. That is why TVF did not come in favor of NN & against Airtel.

really ?

Now I am sure you've been living under the rock.

yes, discussed the facebook pack pricing. I noted how it was much cheaper if all you need is facebook.


same with whatsapp. I know a couple of people who bought smartphones just to use whatsapp. They will be paying less than i pay for a 3g package.

so tell me what is the problem ?

The problem is that you pay extra for each service on the top of your existing 2G/3G subscription.

FIRs being filed are not a laughing matter.

FIR stands for First Information Report. Anybody can file an FIR for anything that they believe might be against the law. The legal validity is judged by the police & the court later. In this particular case, what do you judge from no action being taken on the FIRs?

 

[superczar]

The problem is that you pay extra for each service on the top of your existing 2G/3G subscription.

No you don't.. It was the previous attempt by Airtel to separate out VoIP data as an extra pack that fell under that category
The cheaper FB/whatsapp packages are meant for folks who don;t want to shell the extra money for a regular data pack

On a side note, something worth noting that 3G data is significantly cheaper in India compared to the rest of the world

 

[dafreaking]

Do you have any proof to support your claim. Guys putting videos on YT only make money by sponsorship. That is why TVF did not come in favor of NN & against Airtel.

Youtube pays for views. You have to get a lot though..