Having skimmed the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article on Zero Rating[1] I immediately knew what it was about but I'd never heard it called that before. Think T-Mobile's free music[2] service if you live in the US.
Once again I think this is going to be a hard one. If you understand the devilish details under the surface and it's effects on Net Neutrality you can make an informed decision to oppose this. But it's hard to convince the general public that free is a "bad thing". I think India's Department of Telecom is going to have a tough PR battle on it's hands.
Imagine if Orkut was zero-rated, back when Facebook started. Or if Yahoo was zero-rated when Google started. Internet giants are turning their back on users, now that they have money.
It's pretty standard practice for any company that becomes suffiently large to increase barriers to entry (after previously championing low barriers to entry when it suited them). Not saying it's good for users, but the incentives for corporations are clear.
Exactly. So that is the one thing a government should care about: keeping entry levels low.
However, politicians talk (!) to the public only just before elections. After that they listen (!) to the big guys because that is good for their ego and maybe future career.
Yes, the question is would you rather put people in office who support those barriers and benefit the few, or people who represent the majority? I'm not surprised that corporations behave this way, and it's very important that it's publicized so the populace can defend it's own interests. Just because it's not surprising doesn't mean we shouldn't publicize it.
Are the music streaming companies paying T-Mobile to take part in the program? If not, is the barriers to entry objection sufficiently mollified? That is, the carrier is making an entire class of content zero-rated, not picking favorites.
That's a great question and since I brought up T-Mobile in the first place I went ahead and dug around a little via Google. It looks like no, they do not charge the providers so I guess this was a bad example on my part. They started the program with a few big names (Apple, Spotify, Pandora, more...) and then opened it up to others (Google Play, Rhapsody, more...). But it looks like the entry cost to providers is low/free and in this case T-Mobile is genuinely trying to add some value to the customer to compete against the giants in their space.
So IMHO opinion it's still Zero Rating but consumer friendly because it does not favor one music streaming service over another. I'm not trying to promote T-Mobile, just stating the facts as I see them. The cynical in me thinks that T-Mobile doing it without charging providers is to avoid any any competition legislation they are worried about running up against.
In my heart of hearts, I want to think that TMO understands that the networked future everyone raves about won't happen because data transfer is too costly to make it practical.
Mobile devices are wonderful, but come on, the price of mobile data is assault with intent. I don't mind paying for my data. But I do object to being abused for wanting to use the network for non-trivial activities, such as twitter, farcebook, etc.
Google saw the PR fallout from Facebook's public stance, and decided it would be better to silently lobby. I hope this has some publicity, and they are forced to publicly take a stand in support of neutral pipes.
Supporting Zero Rating is opposing net neutrality. Google generally supports net neutrality in the US, but apparently is supporting (or at least, opposing the idea of opposing) Zero Rating in India.
Google is not supporting net neutrality. Zero Rating is a tool to encourage the opposite of net neutrality. They are lobbying the Indian Government to keep any mention of Zero Rating out of new regulations so they can keep open the idea of promoting fast lanes and free data, as long as people choose Google's content over those who don't offer Zero Rating on their products. I guess because in the end it's the ad money they want over any subscription fees they might collect.
The Indian Telecom landscape has no resemblance to the US or Europe. There is no AT&T/Comcast monopoly. Why? Because the regulator has done a pretty decent job ensuring access to voice and data stays cheap through competition.
As far as I know, in all the big cities you can choose between 7-8 major provider's. No contract. Dirt cheap access. Also worth mentioning is the existence of a reasonably large public sector ISP, with more or less a state mandate to loose money on providing access.
In such a competitive landscape how do the net neutrality arguments of the west apply? Lot of misinformed outrage imho.
monopoly-regulation and net-neutrality are two unconnected issues. you can have a monopoly that does/does-not respect net-neutrality; you can also have a competitive market place where all members respect/do-not-respect net-neutrality.
net-neutrality is not about ensuring broad access or low pricing, whether accomplished by regulation or the free market. net-neutrality is about ensuring equality of access and equality of speech, accomplished by preventing those who control the pipes to pick and choose the priority of what is going through the pipes.
Every market is different and so are their rules. You are right that India has more players than the US or Europe markets but it also has more diversity and population density. Imagine paying all these multiple service providers to make your content free as a small company , non-profit , or startup to reach a billion people.
With multiple service providers available, why would you bother paying one? If they decide to make your service slow, their customers will notice, and if they care about your service, they'll switch. An ISP can only pull that kind of extortion when they're the only game in town.
The point of net neutrality is that without it, your new service will never have a chance to make any inroads at all, so customers won't know they can't access it. A competitive non-neutral market won't fix that.
You're assuming a world in which ISPs have managed to make themselves the gatekeepers for sites, which assumes they have the power to do so. Given competition among ISPs, no one ISP would have the power to do so, and a group of them getting together to do so would quickly find itself facing antitrust charges.
The ISPs don't have to be the first movers; enough megacorps paying enough ISPs to make a "free tier" would have the same effect, which is exactly what we seem to be discussing w.r.t. India.
This is already visible in the US with smaller sites; many video streaming sites, and subsections of even more video streaming sites, are exclusively available to customers of specific cable/sat network ISPs.
If Google and Facebook get their way, the world's poor will get subsidized "basic internet" that only delivers sponsored content. Only the competitively wealthy will be able to pay for the real internet and break out of the walled garden. This is opposed to giving everybody access to the same internet and having governments/charity subsidize the cost for those who can't afford it. Do we really want to create second class netizens?
> Why is the Indian government banning Google from providing free Internet, yet not providing such themselves?
The Indian government is not "banning" Google from doing anything.
> You are saying that he world's poor should become rich enough to pay for Internet, before they can get access to Internet?
In several ways, India has arguably more widespread and affordable internet infrastructure than Europe or the US. And it is getting cheaper all the time.
So the motivation of zero-rating is NOT about helping the poor. It is about the huge market that India represents and the boost in market share that companies with subsidised traffic get.
Just so we are clear, everyone is aware of the case of Nestle freely giving enough of the formula to new mothers to use so that by the time they ran out their natural production of milk had declined to be insufficient to feed the baby. This combined with many mothers being too poor to either afford the formula or clean water to mix the formula with resulted in babies dying. A pretty clear example of when giving something out for free is a horrible thing.
I think that charity with strings attached isn't charity, especially when it just disincentivizes (or makes more difficult) legitimate forms of charity. Or worse, when it makes legitimate forms of sustained enterprise more difficult.
So these western juggernauts are going to start injecting ads into vital communication infrastructure from day zero, and then when India decides it wants its own infra, do you think Google and FB will just step away? This is just the modern version of oil imperialism.
I don't understand why we are using incomprehensible-without-supplemental-material terms like "Zero Rating" and "Net Neutrality" when discussing these matters. It's like they were crafted with the explicit purpose of confusing laymen, like someone challenged you to a game of chance, gave you loaded dice, and you just went with it.
Better terms aren't even really necessary (though they'd be nice). But at least some sort of explanation in the article of what exactly it is that we're discussing would be nice.
If you're on the Net Neutrality side then "toll free" obscures the downside even more thoroughly than "zero rated". So it's clearer... if you're facebook :)
Did you even understand the frustration of OP's post? It's not the terms, it's the fact that the terms are stated with no context. If OP is frustrated about the assumption that everyone knows what terms like Zero Rating and Net Neutrality mean and wants some information about the issues, how could they reasonably suggest better terms?
It's important to remember that the target group is the poorest section of the population who have not previous had access to the internet. While it can sound noble and benevolent in theory it is a clear power move.
In essence what they are doing is aggressively trying to beat the concept and affordances of decentralised networks in penetrating the physical infrastructure, government policy, telecom bureaucracy, and public consciousness.
The third-world poor, as the most exploited class, is one of the last strongholds of meaningful resistance to capitalism. By actively subverting decentralised models and installing in their place, both conceptually and physically, a centralised and hierarchical vision of connectivity they secure the advancement of "surveillance capitalism" and further consolidate their power as transcending nation states.
The appropriation of the concept of internet as pushed by Google and Facebook has already penetrated very far.. according to a recent poll.. "65% of Nigerians, and 61% of Indonesians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared with only 5% in the US (http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...).
The speed at which this transformation is happening means the critical public discourse around these issues is dangerously underdeveloped.
45 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadOnce again I think this is going to be a hard one. If you understand the devilish details under the surface and it's effects on Net Neutrality you can make an informed decision to oppose this. But it's hard to convince the general public that free is a "bad thing". I think India's Department of Telecom is going to have a tough PR battle on it's hands.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating [2] http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/t-mobile-sets-your-music-f...
However, politicians talk (!) to the public only just before elections. After that they listen (!) to the big guys because that is good for their ego and maybe future career.
So IMHO opinion it's still Zero Rating but consumer friendly because it does not favor one music streaming service over another. I'm not trying to promote T-Mobile, just stating the facts as I see them. The cynical in me thinks that T-Mobile doing it without charging providers is to avoid any any competition legislation they are worried about running up against.
More here: http://www.eweek.com/networking/t-mobile-expands-free-music-...
Mobile devices are wonderful, but come on, the price of mobile data is assault with intent. I don't mind paying for my data. But I do object to being abused for wanting to use the network for non-trivial activities, such as twitter, farcebook, etc.
Still, (as an Indian living in India) I am very disappointed at Google selling out like this
As far as I know, in all the big cities you can choose between 7-8 major provider's. No contract. Dirt cheap access. Also worth mentioning is the existence of a reasonably large public sector ISP, with more or less a state mandate to loose money on providing access.
In such a competitive landscape how do the net neutrality arguments of the west apply? Lot of misinformed outrage imho.
net-neutrality is not about ensuring broad access or low pricing, whether accomplished by regulation or the free market. net-neutrality is about ensuring equality of access and equality of speech, accomplished by preventing those who control the pipes to pick and choose the priority of what is going through the pipes.
Not really. Competition can be relied upon to maintain net neutrality. It's what consumers will opt for when given a choice.
Only in monopolies and oligopolies can really get away with violating it (which is why the legislation is necessary in America).
Not in the face of anticompetitive schemes like "zero-rating" promoted web sites.
This is already visible in the US with smaller sites; many video streaming sites, and subsections of even more video streaming sites, are exclusively available to customers of specific cable/sat network ISPs.
Or that some arbitrary third party should be forced to subsidize their Internet access?
Why is the Indian government banning Google from providing free Internet, yet not providing such themselves?
The Indian government is not "banning" Google from doing anything.
> You are saying that he world's poor should become rich enough to pay for Internet, before they can get access to Internet?
In several ways, India has arguably more widespread and affordable internet infrastructure than Europe or the US. And it is getting cheaper all the time.
So the motivation of zero-rating is NOT about helping the poor. It is about the huge market that India represents and the boost in market share that companies with subsidised traffic get.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scanda...
So these western juggernauts are going to start injecting ads into vital communication infrastructure from day zero, and then when India decides it wants its own infra, do you think Google and FB will just step away? This is just the modern version of oil imperialism.
In essence what they are doing is aggressively trying to beat the concept and affordances of decentralised networks in penetrating the physical infrastructure, government policy, telecom bureaucracy, and public consciousness.
The third-world poor, as the most exploited class, is one of the last strongholds of meaningful resistance to capitalism. By actively subverting decentralised models and installing in their place, both conceptually and physically, a centralised and hierarchical vision of connectivity they secure the advancement of "surveillance capitalism" and further consolidate their power as transcending nation states.
The appropriation of the concept of internet as pushed by Google and Facebook has already penetrated very far.. according to a recent poll.. "65% of Nigerians, and 61% of Indonesians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared with only 5% in the US (http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...).
The speed at which this transformation is happening means the critical public discourse around these issues is dangerously underdeveloped.