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

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

#71

Post by slaxman »

Sven7 wrote: post #68

This has been like watching one form of misinformation battling another form of misinformation. One set of misguided people battling another set of misguided people. NetNeutrality is a concept that makes sense in a western context where carriers are basically monopolies. It's unbelievable how good arguments in one context, have been blindly applied to a completely unrelated context. Activists in the West (who's rep a…

Wow! This comment is really far away from reality.

1/ There are no studies that show correlation between free basics and increase in internet penetration. In fact, Reliance Telecom, Facebook's free basics partner in India, marketed it was a way to surf facebook & whatsapp for free.

2/ Google is giving away free internet in Railway stations in India. Unlike free basics, it gives access to the complete internet and not to a set of websites that have done a deal with facebook. No one opposed it, since it does not break net neutrality.

3/ I find it ridiculous that some folks in Western countries can start dictating what's good for the poor in India and think that the arguments of people actually living there are invalid.

I would encourage you to try to understand the issue from a local perspective by speaking to the people who live there rather than have unsubstantiated assumptions.

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

#72

Post by NoPiece »

electriclove wrote: post #55

Great quote on a different article covering the same story: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/technology/india-facebook-fr... ---------- Mahesh Murthy, a prominent Indian venture capitalist, last year described the program as "imperialism and the East India Company all over again," carried out under the guise of "digital equality." "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke e…

Can a quote be great if it is also completely factually inaccurate?

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

#73

Post by splintercell »

electriclove wrote: post #55

Great quote on a different article covering the same story: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/technology/india-facebook-fr... ---------- Mahesh Murthy, a prominent Indian venture capitalist, last year described the program as "imperialism and the East India Company all over again," carried out under the guise of "digital equality." "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke e…

> "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke each other and play Candy Crush, but not be able to look up a fact on Google, or learn something on Khan Academy or sell their produce on a commodity market or even search for a job," he said.Indians use connectivity very differently than the rest of the world(or at least different from the developed countries). To Indians, phone/internet is a mode of communication first. It was the thing which has been missing from their lives the most. This is especially true for the demographics Facebook was targeting.

The reason is the language barrier. A lot more Indians can read and write English needed for directions, news headlines, legal documents, store names etc, than those who can truly express themselves in English. My mom is a great example of this, she can read and write English, but will have trouble understanding a conversation going on purely in English.

This is the reason her smartphone usage is almost all reliant upon content created and generated by others. WhatsApp and Facebook are the two most used apps on her phone. It isn't that she wouldn't like to read up facts about politicians and world events from Wikipedia, it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck. However, if someone were to forward her a news article, a recipe or just make posts on their facebook, she's a lot more comfortable doing that.

It's been less than 5 years since she got WhatsApp and Facebook, but the social network she has created around the two facilitates her family in ways it was not imaginable 10 years ago.

BTW "It's East India Company all over again" is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India (because it's almost exclusively used against any non-Indian entrepreneurship in India).

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

jasonkester wrote: post #54

I'm having trouble parsing this article through all the propaganda speak. Clearly whoever wrote it is happy that a victory has been scored and that the Internet is no longer broken (and has possibly even been saved) with the help of some agency that did something important that we should know about. But it's so thick with its own team's code language that I can't actually parse out what happened. Anybody know what's…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by gnaddel »

NoPiece wrote: post #72
electriclove wrote: post #55

Great quote on a different article covering the same story: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/technology/india-facebook-fr... ---------- Mahesh Murthy, a prominent Indian venture capitalist, last year described the program as "imperialism and the East India Company all over again," carried out under the guise of "digital equality." "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke e…

Can a quote be great if it is also completely factually inaccurate?

Could you elaborate why it is inaccurate?

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

#76

Post by cmadan »

saalweachter wrote: post #49
cmadan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe they ever had any intention of getting the poor online. They have so far never released ANY data regarding how many of the users of Free Basics are first time Internet users despite it being one of the top demands of critics of the Free Basics program. Some independent third party analysis suggest that the overwhelming majority of users of Free Basics are existing Internet users, many of them who have…

The "many of whom have no idea they are on free basics" part is a little weird to me. Are these "users" like my father, who technically has internet access but doesn't use it? Aside from that, I don't think Facebook needs to find "new" internet users to be providing access to the needy. If the users' previous access was the internet equivalent of a polluted river 15 miles away, building a clean well right in the vill…

A friend of mine was on Free Basics. She found out only when she tried to navigate to a video outside of Facebook from a link that she clicked on Facebook and was prompted to purchase a data plan.

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

#77

Post by kopos »

Sven7 wrote: post #68

This has been like watching one form of misinformation battling another form of misinformation. One set of misguided people battling another set of misguided people. NetNeutrality is a concept that makes sense in a western context where carriers are basically monopolies. It's unbelievable how good arguments in one context, have been blindly applied to a completely unrelated context. Activists in the West (who's rep a…

Yes, it is a problem that Facebook is not the saviour.

1. But with a huge untapped market like India, won't there be any other corporations who would step in to build a Mozilla Phone or the Grameen Phone style projects in India?

2. Not even looking to these saviors, it will definitely be the Network operators themselves who will be tapping this market. Even with Free Basics, it was not Facebook that was subsidizing the content or the network costs. So if the networks were happy subsidizing with Facebook, I guess they will be happy doing the same without Facebook in the picture ... No?

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

#78

Post by NoPiece »

gnaddel wrote: post #75
NoPiece wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a quote be great if it is also completely factually inaccurate?

Could you elaborate why it is inaccurate?

For example Facebook explicitly does want to support job searches. (Babajob)

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

#79

Post by ikeboy »

conceit wrote: post #70
ikeboy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, then let providers discriminate all they want, and have the government set up their own competition that does what they want. I'm perfectly within my rights to buy up a bunch of land, and build a road on it, and only let rich people drive on it. There are plenty of examples, e.g. exclusive clubs and the like. I'm allowed to sell water at whatever price I want: but if I charge too much, cities will…

It's the other way around, let facebook build a separate, proprietary infrastructure for their service. I'm not sure if a real Private Network or a virtual PN would be the better comparison.

The government is not allowing that. They're banning differential pricing. Even if Facebook were to build their own network, they wouldn't be allowed to price discriminate based on websites visited.

Also, Facebook is not renting a government network, but a private network. That private network wants to partner with Facebook, but the government is stepping in and blocking it.

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

#80

Post by vertex-four »

cmadan wrote: post #53
sandGorgon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the voip issue is not a neutrality one but a national security one. The reason for obtaining a license us not financial but law enforcement oversight. I'm not justifying either way, but I don't think it has anything to do with neutrality in its economic sense

The proposal to regulate VoIP apps is before TRAI only because of lobbying by telcos who are still in denial over the world moving towards data and want to hold onto their voice call revenues. I'm not sure what purpose licensing will serve from a law enforcement perspective. Banning VoIP apps that refuse to apply for a license will be like playing whack-a-mole as people can easily add a VPN to get around it or the se…

On the other hand, unlicensed VoIP apps would not be allowed to advertise in India, whether that's on TV, billboards, newspapers, or popular Indian websites. They would likely not be allowed to be sold in the Indian locale of Google and Apple's app stores. A communications app that few have installed is close to useless - even in countries with significant freedom, we use Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Whatsapp and Snapchat over alternatives not directly controlled by major companies, because the free alternatives don't have the funds to convince all your friends that they're legitimate.
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