Let’s start with an example to get you running. Imagine a petrol pump, which normally distributes oil at 75 Rs per litre, starts giving petrol at 50 Rs per litre to all Maruti car owners and for a Honda car, the same petrol comes at Rs. 100 per litre. How much sense does it make?
Obviously none at all, at least for me, and this is what Airtel is up to these days. With its recent announcement of charging more data rate for VoIP services, one of the biggest telecom companies in India, Airtel, is trying to provide some serious damage to net neutrality. Instead of charging on the basis of the total data you use, their charges are going to be based on, from which website you are actually consuming data. For example, if you use Facebook or Whatsapp, you will be charged much lesser in comparison to the same amount of data you consume using Skype or Viber.
As a consumer, I have a big problem with this. This will give these telecom companies an enormous amount of power to decide what website and data services a consumer should use. Would you like to let a telecom company decide your preferences?
But in the current scenario, if this is going to be the case, then in the coming few days, I will be pushed to use those websites which are in the good books of telecom companies, and not the ones which I actually like. I won’t be having an absolute right to use a website of my preference. Though they are not actually stopping me from using different-different websites, but this new policy is definitely going to act as a huge deterrent.
Airtel should have no right in deciding which websites I should use and which I shouldn’t. This should be beyond the control of telecom companies. Intervening in the rights of the consumer in such a manner is seriously intolerable.
What this will lead to is that other operators will also start coming up with such plans and policies which will end up in narrowing down the use of internet for everyone. Airtel is crushing the whole ideology on which internet is based, i.e. neutrality.
I cannot allow my telecom company to choose whether I should talk to my friends through Skype or Facebook. Net neutrality is at stake now, and we have to deal with it very seriously or else telecom companies will very softly and slowly take away our rights as a consumer.
Preferential treatment given to apps and companies by service providers is going to prove as a huge loss for the customers in one other very important way as well.
Let’s take a situation to understand this second very crucial point. Right now it’s Facebook and Whatsapp which are dominating the internet, and if they get leverage from the telecom companies, their monopoly will only get stronger. What will happen then is an uneven field will be created for the budding websites and new apps. They will never get a fair chance to compete with the big guns. And that would also mean an end of the creative entrepreneurial minds.
People will never like to shift away from the websites which are available at cheaper rates, hence they will never get an idea of how good those new websites will be. In the longer run, it will be a loss for the people only because the newer companies won’t get a platform to prove their worth and a company which might be better than the existing ones will be lost forever.
It’s none of the business of internet providers to interfere in the lives of the consumer. If we allow such a thing to continue, then there is no limit to how much they can exploit this policy in future. India must respond to it strongly and everyone should raise their voice against such absurd policies by telecom companies.
India is going to see new heights of discrimination if Airtel persists with this policy. Though they have put this plan on hold for now after the recent uprising, but that’s still not enough. Even the thought of doing something like this should not come in the mind of telecom companies. And the only way to stop this is by raising our voice. We must come together to stand against the unjustified policies by service providers. Make a tweet to airtel on Twitter, make a post on their facebook wall against them and leverage any social website that you are active on. Lets show them the power of social media. It’s time to rise, Rise for India.
Featured Image credit: India Today
