So TRAI has ruled against ‘differentiated internet services & pricing based on content consumed’, or as people, who want to dumb down shit for the everyday layperson to understand – TRAI has come out in favour of ‘Net Neutrality’. It is great and something that should have happened. Yaay!!!
Now, while I am still trying to wrap my head around how an institution set up to regulate spectrum allocation to mobile telephony has been put in charge of regulating access to the internet in India, I am amazed at the degree of ineptitude / stupidity / dumbness demonstrated by them in clubbing concepts like Freebasics, etc with Net Neutrality. The two are as diverse as the AAP & anti-corruption or as Rahul Gandhi and a coherent sentence. One has nothing to do with the other.
Net Neutrality means that MTNL / Hathway / X / Y / Z – all organisations that are licensed ISPs (Internet Service Providers) cannot charge a consumer more / less in internet access costs for accessing certain websites and have to ensure that the bandwidth is not throttled / opened up more for accessing specific sites. To give another analogy, Net Neutrality is like saying everyone who pays road tax should be allowed to drive on the same road at whatever the legal speed limit is, and bigger cars who may be able to pay more should not get a better quality road and more speed limit, than normal cars. This ruling is great and will genuinely save the internet from being taken over by big business!!!
What Freebasics, etc are doing is not this. Freebasics is basically a content provider paying for internet to be accessed by those who cannot afford it now so that more people get online & consume their content. Now because the content provider is paying for the internet, he will control what all can be accessed by those availing that service. The freebasics business model is backed (probably) by the increased advertising revenue that they will be able to generate on the back of increased number of consumers, and this increased revenue pays for the free internet given to the consumer. It is a brilliant business model in my opinion, one that takes money from brands / advertisers and uses it to give free content access to the poor. A service like Wynk from Airtel is something similar, but in this case the ISP and the content provider overlap.
Let’s look at the telephony market in India. Over a billion cellphone users, 90% of who are prepaid. 90% of those have balance in their prepaid accounts of less than 40Rs at any point of time, so they aren’t ready / able to pay for expensive internet. Further, the number of people accessing internet on their cellphones is less than 20% (around 200 million) so 80% of cellphone users aren’t online right now.
Internet (broadband – 2mbps or above) costs in India are expensive. Really expensive when compared to the rest of the world. Affordability is a serious issue.
By blocking freebasics, TRAI has deprived the poor (who cannot afford internet access) of access to content. Right now these poor people can access NOTHING online. If someone comes along and allows them to access SOMETHING for free, then what is the problem? One day, when these poor have enough money, they can go out to the ISPs and buy a normal internet connection like everyone else and access whatever they want. But until that day arrives, what is the harm if someone wants to give them free access, albeit to a limited suite of content?
Blocking Freebasics is like telling someone who wants to feed a poor hungry man a roti, that they cannot do so, because if they give the poor hungry man just roti, then they are depriving him of ‘choice’ of food, and that he may want rice instead. This is the most idiotic argument I’ve heard since someone suggested that Rahul Gandhi can become India’s PM. Screw ‘choice’; if that poor hungry person does not receive this food, he will remain hungry. One day, when the man is not poor anymore and has money, he can opt out of receiving free roti and go to any foodcourt and buy whatever food he wants, by exercising his ‘choice’, so why block the roti giver?
If we agree that like food, water, shelter, access to law & access to education, the access to the internet will soon become a basic human right (I think it already should be), then depriving those who want access to the net but do not have the means and are hence willing to curtail their choice in lieu of complimentary access, is not only criminal, it is inhuman.
By this extension of argument, the laws of the country now have the right to block a temple / mosque / gurudwara / church from giving free food to the poor, under the argument that they are giving only a particular type of food and not giving the consumer ‘choice’. This is stupid!!!
As NaMo pushes on the Digital India pedal hard over the next 5-6 years, we are hoping to reach 70% internet connectivity by 2022 (right not only 20% of India is online). However, what nobody knows right now, is how expensive that access will be. It is going to be services like freebasics which will come in & bridge that gap between those who can afford it and those who can’t, and ensure that more & more people get online. By blocking freebasics, TRAI has installed a roadblock in Digital India’s growth path.
Blocking freebasics has given the ISPs (which is a ‘licensed’ business) more clout and would be less inclined to drop their internet access prices now, now that they know that consumers have NO other alternative than to buy internet from them. This TRAI ruling on freebasics has created an oligopoly between all the ISPs in India and has taken India back many decades to the time of the ‘license raj’. Ugh! Sad!
Lastly, let’s talk about the ‘protesters’ against Freebasics. I honestly do not know what their agenda is and their cerebral ability to understand the difference between Net Neutrality & Freebasics. But this is a clear case of those ‘with’ screwing those ‘without’. It was the rich upper-middle-class who already have the resources to have internet access who were protesting ‘on behalf’ of those who don’t. Pl note they were not protesting that those without internet access should get access. They were protesting that those without internet access should NOT get internet access unless it was free of restrictions. WHO the FUCK are they to make the decision on behalf of an auto-rickshaw-driver who does not have data on his phone coz he cannot afford it, but wants to see photos of his son / grandson on facebook through freebasics? These rich have demonstrated an utterly elitist attitude in presuming to speak for the poor and ‘deciding’ on their behalf what the poor can & cannot receive. It is shameful if not downright disgusting! Further, I have no clue if ALL those who supported these ‘protesters’ and sent multiple copies of a badly written ‘appeal’ to TRAI actually understood the issue and the difference between Net neutrality & Freebasics or they just clicked on a link that a popular stand up comic or a popular musician posted online because they like that person. If not then they proved Justice Katju’s statement that “90% of Indians are idiots” correct!
Hopefully better sense prevails at the central government and they develop the cerebral ability to distinguish net neutrality from Freebasics and the blocking of Freebasics is stopped.
P.S. I HAVE NOT BEEN PAID BY FACEBOOK TO WRITE THIS.