Re: Airtel wants to pierce net neutrality, charges more for VoIP

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Ratnendra Pandey <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Can you explain how would a toll road operator create artificial demand by
> chocking free alternative roads. And how likely is such an effort going to
> be successful consistently?
>

Let me share 2 examples of toll roads (both in Bangalore), on 2 extremes of
what you might consider 'social justice' (this is my personal view, anyone
is free to disagree):
1) Silk Board Jn. to Electronic City elevated expressway.
    - It is an "alternative" to the supposedly "busier" and "slower"
(intersections, traffic signals etc.) for-free ground-level road. If you
wish to travel faster and willing to pay a price, take this expressway.
    - It was constructed with zero encroachment of the free alternative
    - In fact, the free alternative was widened, quite extensively
    - Financially, is perhaps not half as lucrative as BIA expressway

2) Bangalore International Airport (BIA) - Hebbal expressway.
    - It is a 'replacement' of what used to be untolled / free connectivity
between city & airport. If you wish to go to airport, you have to pay
Rs.115/- for an ingress/egress. There is absolutely no alternative.
    - The concessionaire "completely" encroached upon the erstwhile free
alternative, if airport is where you wish to go or come from. That road it
replaced was paid-for by public money... our, taxpayer's money.
    - The concessionaire is charging an inordinately high toll, and blocked
all efforts to introduce an alternative 'free' (even if longer, more
crowded and thus slower) route.

Coming to the capital of India, a similar example is seen on the Yamuna
Expressway connecting New Friends' colony to NOIDA and the Saraswati Vihar
old bridge over Yamuna barrage. If you've used both, I think you'd see what
I am talking about. It is an open secret as to why Saraswati Vihar bridge
route has been in a state of complete neglect ever since the Yamuna
Expressway started.

One of the reasons why the net-neutrality is loosing is the realization
> among many that  a provider and its customers consume 30% of bandwidth and
> expect not  pay anything for it.
>

Not sure, what that statement means and care to share the source of this
30% statistics ? Consumers are paying for the data they consume. Period. If
you have solid proof and computation to show how NOT, please share.

If service providers under-estimated and undervalued the bit-pipe they are
offering, it is not the fault of OTT providers and consumers. They never
provided the bit-pipe for free.


> Net Neutrality should not be manipulated to mean that a 16 wheeler truck
> and a two wheeler scooter pay the same toll for using a road.
>

And who is asking for those 2 to pay the same toll tax ? A 16GB 4K-super
hi-def movie download and a 2MB email attachment result in very different
charges on your bill. This is the case with all Airtel dataplans in India.
Note that in the US, the flat-rate data (which has hence ceased to exist)
has singed the service providers by providing this notion that 16-wheeler
and a passenger car, pay the same toll. That is no longer a reality, in
most markets. So, I don't get this argument either.

In a nutshell, it doesn't help to have missed the opportunity and then act
like a cry-baby. Perhaps, it is time for government telecom policy makers
to rethink how telecom businesses are allowed to operate and for telecom
service providers to rebase the fundamentals of their business model.

Data-connectivity is "utility", period. The sooner, service providers
realize this, the better it is for everybody. We can argue ad-nauseum about
this, just like we keep having nostalgic discussions of golden-days of our
youth -- but this is the new world.

------------------------------
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 01:12:22 +0530
To: [email protected]

CC: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [india-gii] Airtel wants to pierce net neutrality, charges
more for VoIP

If 'toll road' is the only road available, or if the operator of toll road,
deliberately chokes the free service-road to unfairly increase uptake of
it's toll roads, then it is very much anti net-neutrality. In this
particular case, it was the former, where 'toll way' would have been the
only way. BTW, we do have one such real life example... the elevated
expressway to the Bangalore International Airport !! There is simply no
alternative. This isn't anywhere close to being "level playing field".

The prioritization of traffic is something that the open public Internet
has tried to support for several years now, in form of various forms of
end-to-end QoS, but the heterogeneity of access technologies and the
"weakest link" have made it somewhat difficult to achieve.

What Airtel tried to do might not be against any current Indian regulation
(I do not know for sure), however one can argue that in the greater public
interest such regulation be introduced post haste. Prioritization of vital
traffic is acceptable (like in the case of M2M traffic that is a matter of
life-and-death or mission-critical), however this should be an exception
not a rule. However there needs to be transparency in terms of what traffic
is considered mission-critical and thus set at a higher priority. What is
not acceptable is deliberate slow-down or charging-extra for (delivery of)
OTT traffic, to create a disincentive for it's usage, and to give the
service provider the undue advantage.


On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Kiritkumar Lathia <[email protected]>
wrote:

Dear All,

I think a lot of issues are being treated under "net neutrality". "Net
Neutrality", *according to my understanding*, means that all internet
services providers (not just ISPs) should treat all lawful traffic in the
same manner (in terms of priority) and should not
favour/block/discriminate/... one type of traffic compared to other; i.e.
no "toll roads", "censorship", "discrimination", ...

Net neutrality does not mean there can not be different pricing for
different string types of 1's and 0's (traffic, content, ...) (business
models) - clearly what Airtel is trying to do.

What major backbone operators were trying to do was to have "toll roads"
for certain types of traffic and, guess what, those who would have to pay
the toll are most vociferous with army of lobbyists to block toll roads
concept since why should they share their revenue from (internet)
contents/services they sell to the pipe owners who delivers these to end
user? Why should there be "ordinary, first class, bulk, heavy packages,
courier" (postal) delivery services (on internet)? Why should one (heavy)
service not hog the network? To me these are the "net neutrality" issues
being debated everywhere.

However, these are to some extent yesterday's issues (in terms of net
evolution). With M2M, D2D, "smart" everything, driverless cars, etc. etc.
the internet is going to change completely with human traffic a small part
and one needs to look at the issue with different perspectives! Should
medical emergency (e-Health - think of ambulances) have the same priority
as movie download/upload (think of a big truck hogging the road and
ambulance can not go through)? What happens then? Movie downloaded
perfectly but the human is dead!

Could Airtel action as a "pipe provider" be considered "discriminatory" and
hence against "net neutrality"? But then is that against Indian
regulations? If so, which ones since I do not believe there are any
regulations against what Airtel is doing as part of its business model?

Not an easy subject!

BR
Kirit





On 29 December 2014 at 08:35, Banibrata Dutta <[email protected]>
wrote:

We have 4-5 odd service providers per circle, and at a time there were 7-8.
Competition played a crucial role in keeping telecom prices in check and
bringing them down, over the last decade. However, the 4-5 service
providers have kind-of settled into their niches (how so ever vast or
wide), and you hardly see any movers-n-shakers in the competitions as far
as pricing is concerned. The price changes are highly cartelized, and it is
functioning like a typical oligarchy. One operator announces a price change
and others follow. Of late, most of the changes have been removal of
promotional tariffs, removing discounts, increasing fares. Adding Reliance
Jio to the mix is expected to cause some shakeout, and we already saw some
effect of that with Airtel pricing 4G-LTE data at price-points
same-as/lower than 3G. However, it is a matter of time before things settle
back. For something that is dependent on limited resource (RF spectrum),
there is a limit to how many competitors you can finally have. So,
competition alone - is not going to be beneficial for consumers. We do need
pro net-neutrality regulations as well.

On the question of net neutrality, and inferior quality internet services
-- that is a bogey as good or bad as any other. For a moment, let us go
back 5 years in time when many operators introduced 3G and video
(technologies like H.324/M which gave fairly usable quality of video
conversation and conferencing)... what was the uptake ? What was the
revenue that operators were making through ill-conceived and ill-priced
offerings ? What chunk of that revenue has been eroded by Skype ?

Finally, I have no idea how net-neutrality is a backdoor effort to bring
more government interference ? I've not doubt that Govt would love to get
it's finger on every internet user's pulse (wiretap) and have a kill-switch
handy !! IMHO, net-neturality does exactly the opposite. Net neutrality
federates the ability and intelligence to have meaningful communication...
highly decentralizing it... technology and business-model wise.



On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 3:10 AM, Ratnendra Pandey <[email protected]>
wrote:

We  should allow Airtel to charge for VOIP or streaming if market would let
it do so.  And we should also allow consumers to choose a provider with
whom they agree on charges and service levels. This will bring more profits
into the industry which will be then followed by more suppliers trying to
take a share out of that profit.   The consumers best bet is a strong
competition providers, a  market in which suppliers are fighting like cats
and dogs for business from consumers.

  The problem is VOIP is prohibited in India ( My knowledge of Indian
telecom my be outdated. I would like to be excused and corrected if the
facts have changed).  The consumers will immensely benefit if we have free
competition among providers and consumer use their purchasing power and
market knowledge to  pick the right services. These kind of disputes will
disappear if the market is freed and innovation is allowed in product and
services.

Some have suggested net-neutrality. All the talk of net-neutrality is a
backdoor effort to bring more government interference into already
substandard internet/telecom market in India. We may like to talk of fancy
words like net-neutrality and what not. But, I think the focus should be on
making high quality internet available to anyone who is willing to pay
market price for it.


If I have to make a choice between net-neutrality and net-availability.
Net-availability will be my choice.  I do not want an inferior internet
that net-neutrality will bring.

Instead suggesting more restrictions on Airtel, why do we not petition for
opening markets and removing legal barriers on commercialization of any
technology?

Sincerely,
Ratnendra Pandey








------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 06:40:24 +0530
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [india-gii] Airtel wants to pierce net neutrality, charges
more for VoIP


Is anyone aware of any organised response / reaction to this issue? The
line silence is deafening

On Thu, Dec 25, 2014 at 10:51 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]>
wrote:

Airtel to charge up to 16 times* the standard data rate for using
Skype and other VoIP services

Airtel seems to be implying that this move has TRAI sanction.

*per rate mentioned in other newspapers

--

Airtel wants you to pay extra for using Skype, Viber, more

If you use services like Skype or Viber to make calls over Airtel's
mobile data network, be prepared to pay extra. Yes, we know you
already pay Airtel for for that data. Doesn't matter. Airtel has added
this line to the terms and conditions of its 2G and 3G data plans:
"All Internet/data packs or plans (through which customer can avail
discounted rate) shall only be valid for internet browsing and will
exclude VoIP (Both incoming/ Outgoing). VoIP over data connectivity
would be charged at standard data rates of 4p / 10 KB (3G service) and
10p / 10 KB (2G service)."

VoIP, or Voice over IP, simply means voice data that is tranferred
over the internet. The next time you're shooting the breeze on Viber,
Skype or Google Hangouts on your phone, keep in mind that Airtel will
charge you you even if you're already paying for that data.

Airtel's move flies in the face of net neutrality, which is a hot
topic round the globe. In the United States, for instance, there is a
proposal to provide "fast lanes" for data intensive video-streaming
services like Netflix and Hulu. Simply put, internet services
providers want to charge these companies extra for carrying their bits
to the consumer, even though the consumers are already paying the
service providers for internet access in the first place. Last month,
President Barack Obama came out strongly in support of net neutrality
by saying that "a free and open internet was as critical to Americans'
lives as electricity and telephone service and should be regulated
like those utilities to protect consumers."

The timing of this move isn't surprising. Whatsapp, which has wiped
off a large part of SMS revenues for mobile service providers in
India, has long been rumoured to introduce voice-calling over data.
Indians already pay some of the lowest rates in the world for voice
calls and carriers like Airtel are afraid that once people start using
data to make voice calls, these revenues will be wiped out as well.

Indeed, in August, the Telecom Regulation Authority of India (TRAI)
had quashed a proposal from Indian telecom companies to charge
over-the-top players like Whatsapp and Viber extra "connectivity
charges." TRAI stated that telcos could make up for the lost revenue
with the increase in mobile data usage.

In a statement to Hindustan Times, an Airtel spokesperson said: "We
have made some revisions in the composition of our data packs, and
will offer VoIP (Voice over internet protocol) connectivity through an
independent pack that will be launched shortly. Our customers can
continue enjoying voice calls over data connectivity by opting for
this VoIP pack, or simply use VoIP services on pay-as-you-go basis."

Which basically means this: unless you buy a seperate VoIP pack,
you'll be charged extra for making calls using Skype, Viber and other
services. If you don't think net neutrality is something to lose sleep
over yet, think about this: If it's VoIP today, operators might start
charging you extra to stream YouTube or use a music service like Saavn
tomorrow. It is not immediately clear if other operators will follow
Airtel's move.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/1300013.aspx
© Copyright © 2013 HT Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.

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-- 
regards,
Banibrata
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving

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-- 
regards,
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving

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regards,
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving

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