India joins 'net neutrality debate Mobile carrier app deals like “Free Facebook with your plan” have controversially entered India's nascent internet neutrality debate, courtesy of that country's regulator and its tech minister. While America is dealing with the inevitable lawsuits over its 'net neutrality rules, India's Telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar …
Deals like "Free facebook access" are exactly what net neutrality is all about. Preventing large companies from being able to pay to keep competition away.
The whole topic is so painfully ironic when companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflixs et al get involved - all of which benefited from being start-ups with a disruptive technology, but all of which have now grown to such enormous proportions that they are, to some degree or another, now attempting to pull the ladder up after them.
It's the job of government, or the regulator, to prevent that ladder-pulling.
This net neutrality debate is settled by law once for all. Let the internet be what it used to be and let the big boys compete on level terms with everyone else.
Given half a chance, with an American mindset of "greed is good", its only a matter of time that they will badger, persuade, sue, collude, cartelise, blackmail, wine and dine etc etc the government or regulatory bodies to allow this takeover of the net.
It already seems that "barriers to entry" are already erected via the roaming arrangements by mobile companies by keeping the data roaming charges so high and limited to existing carriers and agreements amongst themselves. So every time a traveller visits abroad, they either HAVE TO BUY a local sim/data plan or be stung by bill shocks. The reverse is also true so that a traveller from that country is forced to buy a local sim/data plan in the visiting country, or be stung. (between a rock and hard place). This protects their local geographical markets ! ( kind of a monopolistic behaviour). You scratch my back and I will yours.
Similarly, the concept of termination charges is also abused, which evens out in the end. Its like a fixed costs to roaming, whereby the carriers enrich each other at the cost of the consumer. In these day and age of automation, these charges have no legal or moral basis to exist, but the government looks the other way. Commercial agreements are confidential and business secrets. Pure profiteering.
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