NET NEUTRALITY is in DANGER!!!

1220th BLOG POST -->>

       I wasn't familiar with the word "Net Neutrality" until morning but I thought of reading about it on several websites that have described properly about what it is. I came to know about what consequences we will have to bear once it's violated. After reading and understanding quite about it, I felt like discussing the same with my readers as some of you might not have heard about it. Net Neutrality basically means free speech. It allows you to surf the websites and contents without any restrictions. You are the owner of your data pack plan that you got activated by paying whatever amount your service provider asked for. Some of you might say that this is how I have been surfing from quite a long time so what's new about it or why do we need to discuss it all of a sudden. Well, the tension has accumulated because of new introduction in the plans and the latest request service providers have started making to TRAI.

          Recently, all of you must have heard about something called "Airtel Zero". The service provider, Airtel, introduced this on 6th April, 2015, that few applications would be totally free for everyone either you activate your data plan or not. Many of us must have already planned to switch back to Airtel which was the most sold sim card once. But Airtel, along with this, also said that it will charge extra for few other applications if you use them. The problems of Service Providers is also genuine where they complain about application like Whatsapp almost killing their revenue they generated by SMS. Similarly, Whatsapp have introduced voice calling and applications like Skype, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts etc already delivering VoIP services are also cutting the revenues SPs generated by long-distance calling. Therefore, they want to charge users whenever they use such kind of applications. 

          Now, what you are going to face is: Suppose if you pay Rs. 100 for activating your data pack or 3G connection, it might happen that you would be unable to access anything until you pay more to activate each application separately. So for what you pay between 100-200 now, you will be made to pay near about 800-1200 for the same or even more. It's like currently you pay bill for water supply and use it according to  your choice. The Municipality has nothing to do with how you are using the water. But what if they start charging extra amount for whenever you use it for gardening? Another extra charges for whenever you use it for playing Holi? Then, it's not you who is actually deciding on how to use water but the supplier. Same is the case what Service Providers are wanting from TRAI that's worrying all of us. 

         You would also remember how few service providers had introduced free Wikipedia or Facebook or Twitter. But even surfing any website for free is violation of Net Neutrality. When you aren't ready to pay extra for few applications, you aren't eligible even to use them for free. What happens when SPs give few selected applications for free of cost? Like there was a news that Flipkart is joining hands with Airtel for their Airtel Zero thing. This will lead in fast access whenever you surf Flipkart but slow speed whenever you try to open any other sites like Amazon, Snapdeal etc which are competitors to Flipkart. This will end us in purchasing every time from Flipkart only as other sites will trouble us whenever we'll try to access them. This is the problem that you'll face if you'll rejoice this plan of free access to applications. Along with it, it will also become hard for new small businesses and entrepreneurs to launch their applications and gain customers as they'll never be able to pay the Service Providers and subscribe to get accessed for free by mobile users. 

            Hence, it's necessary for us to protest anti-Net Neutrality laws. 24th April is the last day until which if TRAI does not get enough complaint, they will launch plans like Airtel Zero and others. There are several petitions and sites that are making it easy for you to mail TRAI and send the same format of message which considers all the points that would become troublesome and worrisome for us. Do search for them on Google and execute any of those processes. Lets not allow Service Providers decide what we will access; lets keep that right with ourselves. Here, it's definitely #MyChoice. Haha!

 Thanks.

 ABHILASH RUHELA - VEERU!!!