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Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
- zodvik 12y agoI'm currently writing a series of posts dissecting the damning TRAI consultation paper (115 pages long). You can follow that at http://www.zodvik.com/2015/04/15/damn-trai-paper-1/ http://www.zodvik.com/2015/04/15/damn-trai-paper-1/ and contact me if you feel there are improvements to be made (or submit them via PR)
- sand87ch 12y agoNet neutrality is freedom of speech and liberty doesn't have a nationality.join the net neutrality club and support freedom of choice
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- vy3r 12y agoZuckerberg's sly attempt to sneak in free Facebook through Internet.org not gonna work in India.
- jbob2000 12y agoOh no! Giving something away for free! The travesty!
- ishansharma 12y agoInternet.org is currently offered on only one carrier (Reliance) and this is a clear net neutrality violation. Even if it were offered on all carriers, this is a violation. Also, this is hypocritical since FB supports NN in US! What's worse is that some companies are using this as an example to push for legalisation of zero rating. This is worsened by our regulator's stancce which is pro telecom companies.
- miteshashar 12y agoDo you mean if it were offered on ALL platforms, it wouldn't be a violation?
- ishansharma 12y ago@miteshashar Typed it too fast I guess. Will correct.
- miteshashar 12y agoEven worse is that a lot of decision makers in our country's administration can be misled into accepting the practice as digital status quo, because a large company like facebook says so.
- medecau 12y agoThere is no such thing as a free lunch!
- jace 12y agoPrecisely, which is why we're opposed to telcos scamming users with free lunches.
- aravindet 12y agoSometimes preventing fragmentation of the network is more important. A mobile operator can't, for instance, use licensed spectrum to run a service that doesn't interoperate with others or with emergency services - even if it's free. If Verizon were to sign up for this, it would fall foul of FCC's rules too (it is clearly paid prioritization when all websites that don't pay are blocked.) It's not for nothing that net neutrality laws in a bunch of countries (Chile, the Netherlands, Brazil and probably a few more) explicitly forbid zero-rating.
- vy3r 12y agoFB will love for "the next billion" to be in the walled garden internet of FB. More people to advertise to, no competition.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoThis seems a bit naive. The argument is definitely more nuanced than this. For example, Tim Berners Lee has slammed zero-rating as well: http://inform.tmforum.org/news/2015/02/net-neutrality-compromised-zero-rating-says-tim-berners-lee/ http://inform.tmforum.org/news/2015/02/net-neutrality-compro...
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- aravindet 12y agoFacebook's internet.org plan to be somewhat hypocritical, given their (correct) stand in favor of net neutrality in the US. internet.org isn't about the internet at all - it's more a proprietary network similar to Compuserve or AOL. It's the same brand of philanthropy that Microsoft practices when it offers discounted Windows and Office to schools.
- koolhead17 12y agoYep.
- r00fus 12y agoI'd say Facebook's moves here are more sinister than Microsoft's (or Apple's - they do the same thing). In the MS/Apple cases, it's simply about pushing product. In FB's case it's about pulling up the ladder after they've climbed it (balkanized Internet means dominant services like FB stay dominant). After the fwd.us debacle and now this, why should anyone trust Zuck and Facebook in terms of "philanthropy"?
- aravindet 12y agoExactly.
- codexon 12y agoIt really isn't surprising for anyone who has read his history that he is not a very moral person. He made the precursor to Facebook by hacking servers and stealing people's pictures. Then he lied to the Winklevoss twins that he would build their website for them to stall them for as long as he could so he could release Facebook before them.
- Steko 12y agoWhat is the difference between this service and the free busses at the airport that only take you to a certain hotel or car rental offices or say cheap chartered air flights sponsored by a casino and of course packaged with the casino stay? I consider myself 100% pro-NN but I'm having a hard time resolving these analogies.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoToday was phenomenal. The campaign has sent more than 620,000 email to TRAI (Indian equivalent of FCC) who wanted public opinion on whether Internet (or as they say, "Over-the-top services") should be regulated or not. Cleartrip showed courage in being the first one to opt out of Internet.org. A few more soon followed. Tomorrow could be amazing! Edit: Very similar to US, comedians played a pivotal role in popularizing this issue. Here is the video that went viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfY1NKrzqi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfY1NKrzqi0
- ishansharma 12y agoOne thing to note is that there's no EFF like organisation and this is mostly done by volunteers [1]. This has also been largest response to any consultation by Indian government having received 600K+ responses through campaign sites[2][3]. Previous highest was 20000 mails in 1999. [1]: Disclaimer: I am associated and helping the group. [2]: http://savetheinternet.in/ http://savetheinternet.in/ People can submit response here. [3]: http://netneutrality.in/ http://netneutrality.in/ Info site. Edit: Corrected URL #3.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoIt's important to keep in mind that telco's arguments, that they are losing money or finding it hard to recover their investment costs, have been thoroughly debunked: http://capitalmind.in/2015/04/telecom-companies-are-not-losing-money-to-data-services-the-net-neutrality-debate/?hc_location=ufi http://capitalmind.in/2015/04/telecom-companies-are-not-losi...
- ishansharma 12y agoThe original consultation paper also had similar figures. I don't remember correctly but telcos are expected to lose $400 billion from call and SMS decline by 2020. However, they are expected to earn $1.2 trillion from data growth.
- miteshashar 12y agoImagine what number would that $1.2 trillion blow up to, if they have it their way of zero-rated apps and differential rating. The TRAI has been clearly unabashedly lobbying on television media for telcos. Isn't the "Telecom Regulatory Authority of India" supposed to act in the benefits of consumer!?
- kamaal 12y ago>>Isn't the "Telecom Regulatory Authority of India" supposed to act in the benefits of consumer!? Ideally yes, but like every other Government institution in India these people are neck deep in corruption[New term: Lobbying]. The key issue is, telcos realize they are being reduced to mere data pipe suppliers and on the long term[May be a few years] their margins will drop like stone falling in a pit. They are being disrupted through software apps[Calls and SMS going through apps like Viber/Skype/Whatsapp]. So while data growth will happen for a while, post that they will be nothing more than data pipe suppliers. This will just ensure massive flattening of positions in the market. Don't be surprised if BSNL does better than these people in that kind of a world. Because it will be all about infrastructure, and with a unlimited government funding, these people lose out against BSNL if all they will remain is data pipe suppliers. These people once heralded as champions of free market economy and capitalism now want the government to bail them out with regulations in their favor. This was exactly the cry of all PSU's in the 90's when the government wanted to bring in privatization big time. This is all about software disruption. These people disrupted BSNL's business, Now there business is being disrupted. Funny how capitalism works when you are at the receiving end.
- jace 12y agoFor everyone interested in tracking the campaign: stats are posted here: https://twitter.com/bulletinbabu https://twitter.com/bulletinbabu
- aravindet 12y ago[Offtopic] The campaign provides a bcc address to keep track of the number of emails people actually send. However when I sent a response it bounced for this bcc address, although it was delivered to TRAI. This happened on the first day of the campaign (the day the AIB video came out) and it is probably fixed now, but this count could be understating things a bit.
- jace 12y agoI think we're counting about 100k short of actual figures.
- suryamech 12y agocant believe that Indians pushed these companies this much hard for Net neutrality..
- balls187 12y agoWhy? They gained independence from Great Britain without going to war. There is a long history or nationalism in India.
- asdofindia 12y agoThe only reason why Mark Zuckerberg is bold enough to make irrational statements about the benevolence of Internet.org is the lack of such strong opposition. I hope India becomes a model for the world in this issue.
- manish_gill 12y agoAfter limited protest/outrage in communities like /r/india, the news finally hit big when a comedy group AIB decided to make a video explaining what Net Neutrality is: https://youtu.be/mfY1NKrzqi0 https://youtu.be/mfY1NKrzqi0 and then it finally hit mainstream media. Amid pressure from everywhere, Flipkart finally withdrew from the Airtel Zero deal which would have been a blow to Net Neutrality in India. Of course, next step was Internet.org and similar initiatives, which on paper sound like a fantastic idea until you look deeper and begin to see the NN violation problem. This is welcome news indeed. Btw, this was Zuckerburg's response when posed this question: https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png "Some connectivity is better than no connectivity, hence the violation of NN is justified" Last few days have been a mixture of anxiousness and excitement. :)
- comex 12y agoPopular support for net neutrality rallied at the last minute by comedians, eh? Comments sent en masse to a regulatory body? Sounds familiar! Hopefully the result will be the same.
- jace 12y agoWith any luck we'll also turn out to be a campaign to be remembered. :)
- rsync 12y ago"Btw, this was Zuckerburg's response when posed this question: https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png" https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png" Bullshit. Facebook cannot become AOL (which is what all the platforms desperately want to become) unless they can vertically integrate with the network. They cannot currently do that in the US and most of the global north because of antitrust and the growing support and knowledge of net neutrality (thanks, Tim[1]). But maybe they can get away with it in the global south ... plenty of market share there ... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch
- blumkvist 12y ago
- vemuruadi 12y agoGreat news big players opting out, more to come.
- ravimbalgi 12y agowondering, when facebook, google and twitter start opting out from internet.org
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoGoogle and Twitter are not on internet.org. They are Facebook competitors after all. So much for Facebook's mission of "connecting the world". As ClearTrip said today in its statement: "it is impossible to pretend there is no conflict of interest".
- exacube 12y agoGoogle search is on internet.org, so is Wikipedia.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoI see Bing here, not Google Search: http://internet.org/press/internet-dot-org-app-now-available-in-india http://internet.org/press/internet-dot-org-app-now-available...
- jacquesm 12y agoWhat point is there to search without anywhere to go to from your searches other than the sites of those that join the club?
- kamaal 12y agoI'm not sure. But eventually they would rank sites from internet.org higher in their search results?
- ishansharma 12y agoWe have been asking them for days now. No response at all!
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- mkagenius 12y agoJust trying to understand from the first principle: If ISPs doesn't charge for facebook usage, then who _actually_ pays? Someone has to...right? Just curious.
- miteshashar 12y agoFacebook pays. And then owns the user.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoSo, ultimately it's still the user who pays. But he pays relatively more, because now there is less competition (leveraging the network/access to acquire and retain users).
- balls187 12y agoYes, it's a clever way for Facebook to boost their numbers tremendously by giving pipe to people, then counting them as FB users.
- rhino369 12y agoThe ISP connecting to facebook may not have any marginal cost, and if there is a marginal cost is it very low. So nobody or the ISP.
- denzil_correa 12y agoInitially, Amazon pays. Once the users are locked in - ISPs demand more money from Amazon. Of course, Amazon passes on these costs to the consumer in small little $1-2 unnoticeable amount. In the end, the consumer pays Amazon to have special access on the ISPs plus the ISPs to make money from Amazon despite no additional service or product.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- koolhead17 12y agoHappy that someone wrote about this. We don`t need Facebook's walled garden. It is surprising to see "Wikipedia" aka champion of free speech part of internet.org.
- belorn 12y agoIf a company wanted to provide aid and give away food, we don't claim that it is creating an unfair market for the local food industry. If Wikipedia want to give away free access to information, suddenly its an unfair advantage in the market of free information?
- manish_gill 12y agoBecause the access to information is extremely constrained. The Internet is much bigger than just wikipedia. There have been studies which showed that people in such situations who used these so called "Free services" didn't even realize they were actually a part of the much bigger Internet, and just considered them standalone. I guess a similar situation would be people in the old days thinking AOL was synonymous with the Internet. Do you want to live in a world where your access to information is constrained to one site only?
- disgruntledphd2 12y agoGive the choice between that and no internet (Wikipedia alone could be transformative, conditional on literacy), then yes, I'd probably make that choice. Its not ideal, but marrying the commercial incentives of telcos to get people paying for data and the gateway drug of free access seems more likely to get more people connected faster than anything else.
- firasd 12y agoThe difficulty in analogies like this (and other arguments against net neutrality, such as saying partnerships between Facebook and network companies are the equivalent of promotional marketing or bundling) is that controlling the availability of specific sites or apps on a network inherently introduces bias in the network. So this is like an organization that gives away food creating roads that only they and their partners can use, given a government license to build roads (the same way network companies have a government license to build on the wireless spectrum and other channels.)
- kerneltime 12y agoReddit link : http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31vvf2/fight_for_net_neutrality_the_way_forward/ http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31vvf2/fight_for_net_...
- kanchankumar 12y agoHappy to see Cleartrip, times, NDTV, newshunt out of internet.org. Let's talk to every other Indian company which is there, request, cajole, nudge, whatever it takes to get them to withdraw. That's the best way to make this irrelevant in india.
- aravindet 12y agoThe Indian regulator's egregiously biased consultation paper (which sparked this protest) has been exposed on reddit as being written by the telecom industry's lobbyist: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32o00z/proof_the_trai_consultation_paper_was_written_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32o00z/proof_the_tra... Apparently they even doctored an alleged quote from The Economist, inserting text that was not in the original article, to make it more biased towards operators.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoWow! That's unbelievable! I hope the media takes TRAI to the task on this.
- ronald_dregan 12y agolol who fuckin cares? buncha durka durks. seriously nothing worth a damn has ever come out of that shithole
- pratikjhaveri 12y agoAwesome news and thanks for standing up to a dual-standards company and CEO. You can't be for NN in the US and against it elsewhere. Internet.org is purely a vehicle to get more users on to FB....not the internet.
- hsod 12y agoI'm all for net neutrality, but I wonder how the currently unconnected people who have a chance at free connectivity feel about this. My guess-- limited Internet access is preferable to no Internet access and ideological purity.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoI can understand. The question then becomes (1) who decides what is included in "limited internet" and (2) who bears the costs? For-profit company making these decisions on the basis of commercial arrangements will take away all the potential of the Internet as we know it. Would there have been a KhanAcademy if ComcastAcademy ("limited internet access") was offered "for free"?
- disgruntledphd2 12y agoYeah, most of those 620K emails (which isn't a lot at Indian scale) by definition, come from people that already have internet access. Its sad, whatever you think about FB, getting more people access to Wikipedia is clearly a good thing (fixing illiteracy would be better, clearly).
- yellowapple 12y agoYou can do that by distributing offline copies of Wikipedia.
- sumedh 12y agoHow are you going to fit Wikipedia on a cheap smartphone which most poor/lower middle class Indians use. Most of them dont even have a PC.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoOnly if you ignore the opportunity cost. If we didn't give free Wikipedia access, we could have given something else for free. Now who should decide what is a better choice? The user of course! This is NOT the case in internet.org. Facebook picks the choices as breadcrumbs for the poor - while there are alternative approaches that can work. Now, combine this with the fact that picking who gets on internet.org gives the telcos and FB huge leverage, the ulterior motives seem much more likely cause.
- mandeepj 12y agoi think we need both Net Neutrality and internet.org. There should not be a choice of one over the other. Please let me know if I am missing something.
- exacube 12y agoCan someone give me a good argument as to why no internet is better than free limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia? If Facebook will provide free limited internet (and as always, you can pay regularly to get full internet access) for a lot of basic service, it only seems reasonable they will package their facebook and messenger apps as well. On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort?
- ndesaulniers 12y agoBecause it's the opposite of net neutrality. It's picking winners and losers. If Facebook is free, but you have to pay for local home grown Indian social networking sites, well then how will those businesses ever compete? Personally, I'm torn. I'm all for free access to Wikipedia. The problem is, not all of the world's knowledge exists there, so you therefor are only giving people a taste of knowledge. With Facebook and Google, you are choosing the silos for people, and making it very very difficult for competitors. And without competition, localized monopolies tend to stagnate, which ultimately hurts consumers.
- exacube 12y agoI see the argument for competition, but I don't think that freedom is as important as the freedom of communication and education. Imagine someone in the slums of India (there are tens of millions in these conditions) wanting to learn more about irrigation. Is it more important that they have no limited internet for the sake for competition, or limited internet?
- yellowapple 12y agoNeither is important if they have offline-cached copies of Wikipedia (all the content of which is readily available for download and made available under a CC-BY-SA / GNU GFDL dual-license), which can then be distributed on optical media, thumb drives, or some other relatively-inexpensive data distribution medium. This is something that's totally compatible with net neutrality while providing the same benefits you're advocating.
- ignoramous 12y agoIt is surprising that both Flipkart and Times Group pulled out of Facebook's initiative, but unsurprising that they pulled out in tandem. Both Flipkart and Times Group have taken multi-million dollar investments from early Facebook employees and some even sit on their board. They must have really felt the heat to take such an action. Ironically, a lot of awareness in India around net-neutrality spread through WhatsApp and Facebook!
- manish_gill 12y agoApparently Times Group hasn't really pulled out. They have announced that they will, provided their competition pledges to do the same.
- jace 12y agoThey've completely pulled out for some services and conditionally for some others.
- kamaal 12y ago>>It is surprising that both Flipkart and Times Group pulled out of Facebook's initiative They were counting on people's sentiments to fall for free services/products. They realized it could back fire big time. That 'we are for net neutrality' argument is plain B.S. They are making a virtue out of compulsion. Flipkart has a string of screw up's off late. The Xiaomi flash sale, the big billion dollar sale, other price related issues. They are already falling out of fashion. Last thing they need is to perceived as a 'yet another baniya company'.
- driverdan 12y agoThis is how net neutrality should work; driven by market forces, not the government.
- lukevdp 12y agoInternet.org is offering a free service to people who would otherwise have no access to the Internet. Net neutrality on a free service in a developing country is an entirely different issue than net neutrality in developed countries with high Internet access rates. I see similarities between this and GMO in developing countries, where rich, well fed people in developed countries oppose gmo in countries that can't feed themselves because "corporations evil". People for whom Internet access is a normal part of society are in an ivory tower on this issue.
- runn1ng 12y agoI don't want to argue with you since I don't know much about it, but it seems the backlash came from India itself, not from developed countries.
- peteretep 12y agoIndia has plenty of its own middle-class neck beards who don't see why their cleaners, taxi drivers, and street sweepers need Facebook access.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoYou should read Cleartrip's statement when they exited internet.org today. Especially, this bit: "So while our original intent was noble, it is impossible to pretend there is no conflict of interest (both real and perceived) in our decision to be a participant in Internet.org." The protests are not against free data at all. Internet.org could have very well given 100megabytes/month free. They could support it with ads, which is perfectly neutral, if they wanted. Saying that "the poor don't/can't make the right choice for themselves so let us chose for them" - now, THAT IS ivory tower thinking.
- look_lookatme 12y agoI am happy that the service providers in India will continue forth expanding into poor and under-serviced areas without a large subsidy to free them of cost-benefit decisions. I'm sure they will operate in the best interest of the public.
- Yuioup 12y agoCan somebody explain what is going on here? I'm having trouble understanding what this story is about.
- Terr_ 12y agoFacebook and mobile-phone companies in India got together to try a project. The project aimed to provide cheap internet access... only to their "approved" websites. Anything else requires more money from the customer... Or perhaps money from the companies whose websites are blocked. People are starting to realize/acknowledge that the arrangement is a bit of an anti-competitive conflict of interest with a tinge of "pay us or we'll block you" extortion.
- minusSeven 12y agobasically there was plan to give away "free internet" to people. But free here are basically the services of companies that have ulterior motives behind this. Its not really free except calling it that way.
- luizparreira 12y agoVery good for India that they finally realized what facebook plans to do, which is have all the next Billion people coming online having free access to its site and therefore increase its revenue on Ads and other means. Its absolutely unacceptable any government sign up on this, this defeats the entire idea of internet being open to everyone. Last week Mr. Zuckerberg met with the Brazilian President to announce that he intends to bring this to a number of places in Brazil, and the dumb idiot(Brazilian President) was all proud to be announcing that she is making another American billionaire even more billionaire by delegating the work that should be done by her government. I really hope that this "partnership" of them won't last too long, otherwise facebook will have even more leverage and power, than they already have, over anyone who wants to build products that may compete with their apps for consumer's time.
- awalGarg 12y agoI really find it very hard to believe that a company like Facebook with (probably) so many intelligent people on-board will launch such a project without considering the serious downsides and the available better ideas (like the ones mentioned below in comments about free capped internet) etc. I don't want to, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that they just want their own profit with this.
- gtirloni 12y agoThis shouldn't be, but it's indeed business as usual. They have their profitability/success to worry about, especially since they have trouble generating enough profits to justify their share price. They dream of AOL times, if only with some coolness factor to offset their consciences.
- chubs 12y agoWhat if Mark Z framed it as 'free facebook + some educational site access' instead of 'free internet', then he could sidestep all these complaints easily? "The perfect (NN) is the enemy of the good (free fb+wiki)". I imagine farmers could improve their lives by sharing information on regional facebook groups. Best of luck with it Mark, although i know you'll likely never read this :)
- erikpukinskis 12y agoQuestion: If I built a web site that I provide for free and then set up a cheap wireless provider in my town that only provides unlimited SMS and lets you connect to my web site, am I violating Net Neutrality?
- ravipratapm 12y agoI think this is a very positive development. In the end, Internet.org and Airtel Zero are not very different in their scant regard for net neutrality. It's also indicative of just how huge the public debate has become. Indian companies (and the media) have had to very publicly retract on their earlier stand on the issue.
- dummyfellow 12y agointernet.org is a good idea to accelerate internet adoption in developing economies, but an honest one should be open to all companies, any company can join in by providing $x/GB and be part of the program, with x remaining constant for all and no special/hidden contracts. They may also favor startups by giving 1st n MB/GB free.
- gshrikant 12y agoIt is indeed heartwarming to see such mobilization for a just cause like internet neutrality. One of the biggest hurdles in defending 'intellectual' issues like net neutrality, privacy or academic pay-walling is the general public's apathy towards such perceived niche issues while there are pressing issues to deal with closer to ground - poverty, hunger, vaccination come to mind. I am reminded of Bill Gates' take on the Internet.org initiative [1] and while I certainly stand with him on that, I feel it is important to recognize what such intellectual issues represent: freedom to information, which is admittedly abstract, but fundamental nonetheless. [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-prioritizing-internet-access-before-malaria-research-is-a-joke/ http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-prioritizing-internet-ac...
- alondonstartup 12y agoReally happy to see citizens standing up for principles and against corporate interests in the developing world. Great to see these principles in such a large developing country, compare to places like China where the population seems much happier to let "big brother" tell them whats best.
- sandeeptodi 12y agoEveryone is greedy once in a while. So were the Internet hotshots in India but good that sense prevailed finally.
- vasundhar 12y agoI think http://savetheinternet.in http://savetheinternet.in did really save Internet from the stupid regulators who have absolutely no clue of technological implications of what the Big and dominant ISPs are doing to the freedom and Net Neutrality. Indian ISPs are too opportunistic to divert the subject from Quality of Service to Issues to making more buck than what they are really worth.
- minusSeven 12y agoReally good job by the volunteers who put in the effort to the raise the awareness about this.
- Ash-k 12y agoMark Zuckerberg on Net Neutrality in India http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/57d41c0f1e6a06ac6f2a/raw/075e0e4c04cf8202bcf99734e71bfb0745fb5f30/MarkZuck-Response http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.githubusercontent...
- bugsmasher 12y agoI hope Facebook, Internet.org and Zuck give up their charade of philanthropy and come out clean because I can't seem to identify the so-called "poor" people of India from their ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4