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

On Tue Dec 30 2014 at 10:07:41 Kiritkumar Lathia <[email protected]> wrote:

> In the last 15 years, internet has grown from being "nice to have" to a
> must have for communicating. fixed telephony replaced telegrams and telex
> and became must have "universal" (ie all have right to it) utility. Same
> rules apply to mobile telephony.
>
> Now internet is replacing both and is a must have for all - so should it
> become "a utility" from regulatory view point?
>
> I know the loud response will be "no it stifles innovations" so is
> internet a commercial enterprise (and hence ultimately profit/loss
> determines) or a public "utility" for all citizens since internet has
> become and will become the next mode of communicating?
>
um, on this list, please don't assume responses. You aren't hearing a loud
no, in fact a loud yes. I believe that Net neutrality is the basis for the
enormous creativity on the Internet. The Internet should be a utility
similar to what electricity is in enlightened countries like Germany, where
you have a right to take out and feed into the network at reasonable rates.
For the Internet, I believe the rates should be zero, because monitoring,
billing, handling complaints, sending goons to collect, etc etc cost more
than they bring in.

I believe that any attempt to look at packets and make decisions about them
slows them down, and the more complex the decision, the more you lose, so
violations of Net neutrality are counter-productive: that which you are
trying to speed up is, at best not speeded up, while everything else,
customer satisfaction included, dive.

The telecom people have been trying hard to get the rest of the world to
think in the outdated way they do. They have long argued that Quality of
Service cannot be guaranteed on the Internet, because you cannot predict
how long a packet will take to reach. A person who thinks the Internet way
asks that instead of wasting money on this discussion even, why not simply
work on increasing bandwidth and making things go faster, not slower.

In the outmoded telco thinking, you must charge for every bit you carry,
the maximum that you can extract from the customer. So, if customers are
willing to pay a rupee for the few bits you send in an SMS, charge them
that. It is irrelevant, according to them, that a bit of information only
costs 0.00000000001 rupee to transmit to the other end of the globe (
please correct me if I didn't guess the correct number of zeros ;)

The problem with this outmoded thinking, is that it requires all suppliers
to toe the line, as in any other cartel. Airtel is foolish to even attempt
to do this on its own. And, according to
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Airtel-drops-plan-to-charge-extra-for-Viber-Skype-calls/articleshow/45673580.cms
, they folded quite quickly. I hope this thrashing will stay in the
memories of telco managers for a while.

I also don't like the term Net neutrality. I prefer, but still am not happy
with, guidelines for efficient running of the Internet -- suggestions,
anyone?

Arun Mehta

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