11–20 of 67 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concern, presumably, is that customers who receive their data for free with respect to a certain number of applications will have less of an incentive to place themselves in the position whereby they pay for the data and can access the Internet as a whole. It would, in effect, be a way of imposing asymmetrical data patterns through incentivising selective aspects of consumer behaviour.
Yes I can see it is anti-competitive and may not be in the general good, but I don't see how it a violation of net neutrality?
Now, one could argue that it is not a violation of net neutrality because the data is still being paid for – it is simply being paid for by another source. However, I find these arguments unconvincing. If the intention of net neutrality had simply been to ensure that data was paid for, then it would not matter if data was treated better or worse based upon some payment of a company. After all, the data would still be being paid for – it would simply be that some data was being paid to have faster service associated with it. In principle, that latter example would be no different to an end user of the ISP paying for a faster connection.
There is only one solution: If absolutely nobody has to pay for their mobile data usage, then there are no “poor” people in that respect. 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I understand correctly, someone out of data on his/her plan will be able to access data from some businesses (who pay for the data), and not from other "normal" businesses. So in a sense it's a form of binary prioritization: 0 or 1.
It isn't a violation of net neutrality if I don't pay my cable bills and so get cut off. I am not suggesting that it is a good idea for companies to abuse their market power, but it is not an abuse of net neutrality to pay someone else's bill.
> We need to force the tech majors to take a stand against this. 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 re…
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I understand correctly, someone out of data on his/her plan will be able to access data from some businesses (who pay for the data), and not from other "normal" businesses. So in a sense it's a form of binary prioritization: 0 or 1.
It isn't a violation of net neutrality if I don't pay my cable bills and so get cut off. I am not suggesting that it is a good idea for companies to abuse their market power, but it is not an abuse of net neutrality to pay someone else's bill.
What's being described here is much more akin to cable, where many channels pay for access to consumers.
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.
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.
There is only one solution: If absolutely nobody has to pay for their mobile data usage, then there are no “poor” people in that respect. 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.
If you pay nothing for a service, then you are the product. Facebook and Google are already providing enormous value for free, if you have an internet connection. Now they want to provide it for free even if you don't pay for your internet connection. This arrangement changes nothing about the consumer relationship.
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.