Google joins Facebook in support of Zero Rating in India
medianama.com
medianama.com
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.
[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.
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.
Still, (as an Indian living in India) I am very disappointed at Google selling out like this
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.
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.