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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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, phon…

"... is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India... " How is that racist? Expressing nationalism is not racist unless in specific other circumstances. In the U.S, Japanese and Korean auto makers were accused of stealing jobs and Latino Americans still are... I see it as a form of nationalism. [edited: to remove Europe and fix punctuation]

Nationalism ? No Sir, this is protectionism and dare I say, Xenophobia.

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

#92
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a website called vactruth may not be the most impartial website around.

I agree. CNN may be? http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1170073

That's not CNN. That's an "iReport", which anyone can post. This one was posted by an anti-vaxxer called "VaccineThis". Zero credibility. http://ireport.cnn.com/people/VaccineThis

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

#93
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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, phon…

Interesting point but I'm not sure how it applies to the argument. If websites are low quality, is that justification for an ISP to block them?

Never said that. Also Net Neutrality regulation isn't the only thing preventing ISPs from blocking all the websites they want willy-nilly.

What ISPs want is ability to charge more for priority services (which includes but not limited to 'express lanes').

What NN supporters think this would mean is that ISPs will block websites.

Anyone has a right to block any content on their private property. Newspapers can censor articles. TV can only air what they wanna air. You can chose to listen to whichever radio station you wanna listen to. Until the ISPs promise you to not block any website, they have a right to block any website or deprioritize it for that matter.

When ISPs sell you an internet package, a 'feature' in non-NN world they would wanna provide you is: 'No blocked sites' in addition to Fiber, fast speeds, low prices, etc.

Any internet package which has blocked content on it, and blocking wouldn't be done proactively or blacklist-based, but rather like Free Basics was. Only a certain whitelisted sites were allowed. Any such package would be priced lower than a no-blocked sites package. Why? Because fewer people would want it. Discrimination of data also allows investment into the internet infrastructure. It's like Facebook ads are paying for the internet for the poor people.

Imagine this, you find out that people in New York love Mangoes, but there is nobody supplying them with Mangoes(and only super rich people are able to afford Mangoes). You find out that the city of Chicago has a LOT of Mangoes and available for very cheap. So you take your savings, buy a truck, drive to Chicago and bring a truck full of Mangoes to NYC. The question arises, since everybody from rich to the poor want Mangoes, at what price do you sell them?

If you auction the Mangoes to the highest bidder, then only the super rich will be able to afford it, if you sell it at a minimal profit(since lets say you're not in it for making profit) then while everybody will be able to afford it, only a few people will be able to acquire them until you bring back the next batch.

If you want to be able to provide Mangoes to maximum number of people, the smartest strategy is to sell them to the highest bidder, and then use the extra money you're getting to buy more trucks and make frequent trips.

This is exactly what Net Neutrality prevents from happening. When discriminatory services are provided, it allows for more services to everyone. You think that Microsoft will be able to pay to block GMail, where as what will happen will be more like UPS's regular mail vs overnight delivery. Amazon will not pay UPS to ship things through regular mail if UPS started accepting money from Walmart to slow down or block Amazon's packages.

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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, phon…

"... is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India... " How is that racist? Expressing nationalism is not racist unless in specific other circumstances. In the U.S, Japanese and Korean auto makers were accused of stealing jobs and Latino Americans still are... I see it as a form of nationalism. [edited: to remove Europe and fix punctuation]

In India Nationalism is a good word, whereas in the rest of the world it's an awful word because the rest of the world saw what Nationalism eventually takes you to (WW2, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan).

Nobody in US who opposes foreign labor in US would ever wanna be called a 'Nationalist', it is the same thing as being called a racist(actually, it might even be worse).

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

#95
post #51
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a step in the right direction. TRAI was only deciding on differential pricing not slow/fast lanes and currently no ISPs are implementing slow/fast lanes whereas differential pricing (i.e. free plans for Facebook, Whatsapp, their own shitty apps etc) were all over.

Definitely a step in the right direction, but there are plenty of ISPs who provide preferential treatment to Google by peering with their servers. YouTube HD videos stream without buffering on 512kbps connections. https://www.quora.com/I-am-from-Mumbai-I-have-an-Internet-co...

Nothing stops anyone else from peering. There's no differential pricing involved here, just regular infrastructure.

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

#96
Couple of articles I would recommend reading about Free Basics

1. Here’s How Free Basics Is Actually Being Sold Around The World http://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/heres-how-free-basi...

2. How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Internet Program https://medium.com/backchannel/how-india-pierced-facebook-s-...

For the second article, reporter asked Facebook to put her in touch with Free Basics users. All the people that Facebook connected her were already internet users. But Mark Zuckerberg in an FB post claimed that "19 million people were connected to the internet for the first time with free basics".

Both these articles present examples of how Free Basics is actually advertised in rest of the world.

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

#97

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, phon…

Your is a very specific example. My mom can't do that. But father can.

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

#98
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…

Could you please share what you are smoking, that has got you this high to be so far disconnected from reality.

Here is a concise set of carefully articulated arguments: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1Yfbhrlb7a_z-pQytLPwE... which are very true in the Indian context.

Also your argument on free-market ignores, assumes the absence of a regulator. It might hold when no regulator exists. But under the given condition when a limited amount of spectrum, a natural resource is auctioned to a select number of companies and a regulator exists, how possibly can this be un-regulated?

How possibly can you hand over the power to seek rent from these content provides to these bullying telcos. What would the repercussion be to the consumers of these content.

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

#99
post #71
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…

1. Facebook has provided studies that do indicate increased internet adoption after free basics (real internet adoption, after having been introduced via Fed basics). You're welcome to read the studies and debate their bias, but the studies exist.

How the telecoms market is irrelevant to this discussion. Of course they're going to market having access to the most popular websites and apps. Hell, they probably use the same advertising when selling real internet service.

2. Also irrelevant. Internet in train stations is not comparable at any level to cellular data connectivity for 10's of millions of people.

3. You are right in this point, but I also find it presumptuous that the Indians with enough money to have internet are the ones dictating what is good for the Indian people without enough money for internet.

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

#100
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. CNN may be? http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1170073

That's not CNN. That's an "iReport", which anyone can post. This one was posted by an anti-vaxxer called "VaccineThis". Zero credibility. http://ireport.cnn.com/people/VaccineThis

Ah. My bad. It says "Not verified by CNN" clearly on the side pane and within the image. I just jumped straight to the main content. I agree with you that the post does not have much in the way of credibility. Thank you for pointing out and apologies for wasting your time.
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