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India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

blog.savetheinternet.in

191–200 of 224 posts

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a book called "Economics in One Lesson" [1] which is quite in few ways similar to your arguments. The gist of the book is Government should avoid doing anything in capitalistic market, goes on to argue against Minimum wage Laws, Labour unions, Price control etc. and how a free market will solve every economic problem. The problem with your arguments / analogies and of that book, is that they tell a simplistic…

> You say that a 'no-blocked sites package' and 'whitelisted site package' could co-exist but fail to see that, the former one could be priced so high (once the latter gains a very large market share) that it becomes necessary for an ordinary person to limit his choices. See this is where pretty much everywhere gets it wrong. Prices aren't set by one side. Prices are ALWAYS set by both sides coming to an agreement. P…

>See this is where pretty much everywhere gets it wrong. Prices aren't set by one side. Prices are ALWAYS set by both sides coming to an agreement.

The price will only be efficient in the face of robust competition. The price will not be optimal when there is a monopoly. If the telco/ISP market were actually competitive, a plan that imposed artificial scarcities (like limiting packets based on their content instead of the actual cost to transport them) would never see the light of day as competitors would offer an uncrippled product for essentially the same cost.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closed nature of the internet is dangerous for reasons far beyond "mom and pop can't use the rest of the internet anyway" argument: 1. Content Quality reduces due to lack of choice, and lack of exposure: Closed-groups are places where spam, false information, propaganda breed to a high degree. Other parts of internet help verify claims/suspicions/hypothesis. 2. Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits:…

> Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits: Facebook would hold immeasurable power, once they've got people hooked onto thinking that there's nothing beyond their apps. I wanna deal with this monopoly argument I keep hearing everywhere in this thread. Can there be a monopoly of a web service? Facebook dethrowned MySpace, did myspace have a monopoly? MySpace dethrowned Friendster. If Google has a monopoly in…

You answered your own question, sir. Democratalized Internet is one way those behemoths are taken down.

At Google they say that the compitetor is just a click away. With the "FreeNarcotics" version of the iternet, that may not be true anymore, and a true one omni-monopoly may emerge.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#193
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you are getting your information from. I can still buy Pepsi and Coca Cola in India. And I have friends who work for IBM. Coca Cola has been in bad news for other reasons. If you sell a pesticide poisoned drink, you must expect to be held accountable by the law someday.

For someone who is a License Raj apologist, you clearly don't know enough the History. In 1977 Janata Party under the leadership of Morarji Desai kicked out Coca Cola and IBM (as the high profile companies). Both the companies came back in 1990s. Go do some research before you start defending economic policies.

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Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> India just got free from a colonial power which had sneaked in with trade as a excuse and then ruined pretty much everything for the next 3 centuries. It's funny though West Germany, which was completely ruined by WW2 emerged as a lot more prosperous country than what India did for the first 40 years. Do you have any idea how badly Germany was bombed. If you say things like "But Germany is an exception because X",…

> It's funny though West Germany, which was completely ruined by WW2 emerged as a lot more prosperous country than what India did for the first 40 years. Do you have any idea how badly Germany was bombed. If you say things like "But Germany is an exception because X", then think why East Germany couldn't be as rich. East Germany was about as poor as West Germany after WW2. Well, West Germany is an exception because i…

This year India will be celebrating 70th Independence day, it is not infant democracy as it was in 60s or 70s, but it is about damn time, Indians owned up their own record of self governance and stop blaming the British. The act of blaming Population and British is getting stale and old.

>>Yes, those lazy Indians, always up to no good.

Indians is being used as catch all and you are trying to misrepresent his statement. No one said Indians are lazy, that would be affront to my own family and friends. But Indians need to own up the kind of leadership they have elected and the subsequent results.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany and France are 1/10 the population of India or smaller. India is 2x+ USA populations. All I am saying is that there is no need of creating the same piece of software by a different team of people just because of NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). India should spend time in creating other things. China created its own search engine because they want a feature i.e. censorship, which Google doesn't offer them.…

> All I am saying is that there is no need of creating the same piece of software by a different team of people just because of NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). India should spend time in creating other things. It's not just NIH. If you're in the small leagues you get to use whatever other players offer, but if you're one of the superpowers, like China is and India wants to be, it makes sense to have your own infras…

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Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what the internet should be like. The thing is: how does banning Free Basics / Internet.org provide that? That's what bothers me about this movement: it should be about giving poor people free access to the Net (which would just render Facebook's toy platform irrelevant - no need to ban it). Today a bunch of activists are celebrating victory, but tomorrow the poor will still have no Internet access. It's hard…

> but tomorrow the poor will still have no Internet access That would still be the case if the verdict was the other way around. There's no evidence that Free Basics actually brought a significant number of new people on the internet (the rate of people cited as joining Free Basics is comparable to the rate of people joining the internet in general, so it didn't change anything) Note that data plans are pretty cheap…

> Note that data plans are pretty cheap in India.

Cheap enough for the 60% of rural Indians who live on less than 35 Rs/day [1]?

> The cost of a smartphone that can handle modern websites (especially Facebook, which breaks on old/slow phones and browsers) is more than the cost of a few year's worth of data.

The vast majority of mobile phones in India are feature phones which are considerably cheaper than smartphones [2]. To be included in Free Basics, sites have to work reasonably on feature phones. Free Basics sites are accessed through a proxy which modifies requests so that the sites can tell that they are being viewed by a Free Basics user, and so the site can present a version that works without requiring "modern" features like JavaScript, SVG images and WOFF font types, iframes, video and large images, or Flash and Java applets.

[1] http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-05-04/news...

[2] http://www.igadgetsworld.com/india-smartphone-and-feature-ph...

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#197
post #86

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India has different set of laws on it. It's not allowed to create slow lanes in the first place. It's also not allowed to provision a broadband speed of lower than 512 kbit which is due to be revised to 1 mbit/2 mbit minimum depending on where you are later this year. Similar minimum speed rules exist for 2G, 3G, and now LTE. This new ban works alongside other laws. Broadband operators must adhere to existing neutral…

You are contradicting what was written on savetheinternet.in. I don't know which is more accurate. FWIW I haven't seen any minimum speed requirement. I've only seen that broadband has a minimum speed. And I've seen ISPs advertise "high speed Internet" to get around it.

They got busted for high speed internet thing. Currently, all 3 major providers -- Airtel, BSNL, Reliance adhere to rules. All the new ones like Tikona do too. Can you show me a live example of a lower speed internet available anywhere?

The rules regarding minimum speed for 3G/2G/LTE are in spectrum bid documents.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny though West Germany, which was completely ruined by WW2 emerged as a lot more prosperous country than what India did for the first 40 years. Do you have any idea how badly Germany was bombed. If you say things like "But Germany is an exception because X", then think why East Germany couldn't be as rich. East Germany was about as poor as West Germany after WW2. Well, West Germany is an exception because i…

This year India will be celebrating 70th Independence day, it is not infant democracy as it was in 60s or 70s, but it is about damn time, Indians owned up their own record of self governance and stop blaming the British. The act of blaming Population and British is getting stale and old. >>Yes, those lazy Indians, always up to no good. Indians is being used as catch all and you are trying to misrepresent his statemen…

>This year India will be celebrating 70th Independence day, it is not infant democracy as it was in 60s or 70s, but it is about damn time, Indians owned up their own record of self governance and stop blaming the British. The act of blaming Population and British is getting stale and old.

Well, the British never really "left" (controlling politics and influencing the area) until several decades later -- not at the nominal "Independence" day.

>* but it is about damn time, Indians owned up their own record of self governance and stop blaming the British. The act of blaming Population and British is getting stale and old.*

That (doing their best) should happen whether they blame the British or not. The effects of the colonialism shouldn't be an excuse -- just a historical reality that is admitted.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#200
post #89
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote says Facebook doesn't want poor people to be able to search for jobs. That is obviously wrong or else they wouldn't provide job search. You may believe they want to monopolize job search, but that is not what the guy said. And show me an example of a job site that want allowed on their platform.

Helping the poor is a red herring. Facebook could easily give fair, unbiased acccess, but they want a monopoly. Would you be so apologetic if Comcast gave everyone free NBC streaming but charged more for Netflix?

How could Facebook give everyone unfettered access? Wouldn't that involve paying for everyone's data plan?
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