An illustrious history

Killing the golden goose

READ ALSO:

Follow TOI Tech on Twitter

And like us on Facebook

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI/BENGALURU: The battle for net neutrality -- the principle that all traffic travelling across the internet should be treated equally at all stages -- isn't over. There's good news, for example, e-commerce bluechip Flipkart publicly changing its stand on net neutrality.But profound dangers remain. The very strength of internet -- it's a vast global network -- also makes it uniquely vulnerable to access manipulation. This vulnerability is greater because mobile phones have displaced personal computers as the main internet access point for consumers.Telecom companies can easily create access barriers, keep competition out, give unfair advantage to established internet businesses and harm both innovation and consumer welfare. Technology entrepreneurs ET spoke to were unanimous in their view that keeping internet free was crucial for both consumers and business.Sunal Jain, founder and CEO of @MobiNxt, an app developer, said, "Without net neutrality, startups will fail...consumers won't be ready to pay for a new, innovative product." Jain's point was that a startup's initial investments were already formidable -- in servers, government fees, HR -- and an internet that raised entry barrier by making them pay to, say, telecom companies would a big blow for India's newest entrepreneurial force.Experts agree. Prasanth Sugathan, Counsel at Software Freedom Law Center, told ET that Digital India, a big government plan, will not take off without net neutrality that promises a level playing field."Just think of a scenario when a smaller player is shut out by an initiative like Airtel Zero....which creates an uneven playing field for smaller players. It definitely leads to discrimination." Sugathan said. He also said initiatives like Internet.org, which says some service providers will offer special rates to some consumers for accessing sites like Facebook, are not so much philanthropic as actually violating net neutrality.A young entrepreneur elaborated on Sugathan's point through the example of his own firm. Aravind Ravi Sulekha, 30-year-old CTO of Scrollback, which is developing Whatsapp-like feature for online forums, said, "We're a pre-revenue startup and will not be able to pay telcos any money, even if we wanted to. We have not budgeted for it in our costs...I must mention that we'll be directly affected if anti-net neutrality billing or blocking is allowed for chat apps, and this is a source of great worry." Sulekha is making a point that's been demonstrated over and over again in internet's growth -- the fact that innovation needs the net to be neutral. Google search and Google's email service, Gmail, wouldn't today be the consumer-friendly, super-efficient global winners had internet run on the idea that first movers will enjoy special access. Google's search service was preceded by Yahoo 's and products like Ask Jeeves and Alta Vista. Gmail was launched after Microsoft 's Hotmail had become dominant.And thanks to net neutrality, even Google lost -- its Orkut, which was in play long before Mark Zuckerberg dreamed up a social network in a university dorm, was beaten by Facebook, which also outsmarted MySpace, even though the latter was backed by Rupert Murdoch. Microsoft had tried an early form of net non-neutrality by proposing a separate space on internet called Mozaic. Mozilla was the response -- a browser that worked on open source. Mozilla, incidentally, was the short and spice up form of the phrase 'Mozaic Killer'.Where would WhatsApp, a huge hits among users, be today if telcos could privilege texting over WhatsApp's messaging service.Indiatimes.com (a venture from BCCL, which owns this newspaper) was an early mover in the e-commerce game. But because net is neutral, a startup like Flipkart could emerge as the winner and today, Flipkart has to keep in mind where the next e-commerce winner will come from.Everyone's favourite internet fact provider and fact checker, Wikipedia, would have not taken off as free, open sourced content had the long-established and pay-for-use Encyclopedia been able to privilege itself on the net.India's thriving second hand goods online marketplaces, Quikr, OLX, needed a neutral net. Had the quality of their sites been affected by special access given to established, bigger players, consumers wouldn't have wasted time testing these new marketplaces.An arrangement of special status in a telco platform -- the Flipkart-Airtel plan -- will kill this spirit of change and competition. Venkatesh Hariharan, director, Alchemy Business Solutions LLP and former head of public policy and government affairs at Google, explained why telcos need to get what internet is really about."Net is a global platform where distance does not matter, while the telco world is metered on distance...the advent of smartphones and mobile internet has led to a collision of both these worlds. In a world where bandwidth is abundant and cheap, the concept of metering based on distance will fade away," Hariharan said.Hariharan's point can be expanded by an example every net user will instantly connect with. Suppose a service like YouTube, which is flush with cash and has corporate muscle, persuades telcos to offer its service on a priority -- that is, a YouTube video will never buffer but, say, a small competitor's might. With that kind of special access, the next game changer in internet video hosting will never be possible.In the US, these points were made strongly and repeatedly when net neutrality was being debated. Vonage and Skype, net-based calling services, would have never taken off if US telcos were allowed to discriminate between various services. This was a particularly potent danger because some US telcos like Verizone had competing services like VoLTE, as did some internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast, which offered Digital Voice.Hariharan says a non-neutral net can damage India's technology sector severely, "set it back by years". He says telcos, instead of creating plans like Airtel Zero, should understand internet better. "Telcos have not been great at fostering innovation...they have only themselves to blame for the fact that the app ecosystem has completely bypassed them. If telcos are allowed to decide which app to promote, it could lead to another fiasco. Private arrangements like Airtel Zero could distort this market through sheer money power...".Antony Alex, founder and CEO of myLaw.net, an online legal education platform says at stake is "the future of internet". "Internet as we know today will not exist", Alex said, pointing to the danger if plans like Airtel Zero took off."It will stifle innovation. A country like ours needs open access to internet. If we want to spread literacy and education, this is our best bet. We are an online learning company and for online learning companies, users need various tools to access."The point made by Indian startups was emphatically made in the US during the net neutrality debate.It was pointed out by experts that venture capitalists would be less willing to fund ideas if they didn't have equal access to internet. If startups are required to pay telcos or ISPs to get equal access as big players, they will put off investors. The result? Today's flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem will start dying.As Jain, @MobiNxt's CEO said, "Technology always wins...imagine what free internet access can do with coming technologies from drones and satellites." "Consumers should pick the winners, not telcos and ISPs", this start-up entrepreneur said.That, in a nutshell, is why India must always keep internet free.>>> @toi_tech >>> TOI_tech