[Sven7]

This has been like watching one form of misinformation battling another form of misinformation. One set of misguided people battling another set of misguided people.

NetNeutrality is a concept that makes sense in a western context where carriers are basically monopolies. It's unbelievable how good arguments in one context, have been blindly applied to a completely unrelated context.

Activists in the West (who's rep and rent are based on their commitment to netneutrality) without knowing anything about the local context have been cheering on local activists.

Local activists (led by stand up comedians ofcourse similar to Glenn Beck\Jon Stewart) getting carried away by this support (cause Urban India has this strange craving for western validation which I still don't fully understand) have now convinced the regulator to step in and are celebrating victory.

This is similar to how the Egyptians celebrated victory after the army stepped in to depose a democratically elected govt. Just Unbelievable! Free markets are dead. Regulation driven by manufactured outrage or vested interests manufacturing outrage are alive and thriving.

Ofcourse it doesn't help that Facebook and their games are involved which automatically swings every debate into deeply religious territory. As much as I can't stand Facebook and will have nothing to do with them ever, the point of a free market (which produces innovation) has been lost.

If Christian missionaries or Hindu missions go and setup schools and libraries for free in Rural India is someone protesting differential pricing in Urban India. It's ridiculous.

The people who loose out are the farmer\weaver who just need an email address to be linked to the cities. Who is going to provide that now? Rural India is so vast and voiceless that they are the automatic loosers in such a debate.

Congratulations NetNeutrality activists! Well done.

[slaxman]

Wow! This comment is really far away from reality.

1/ There are no studies that show correlation between free basics and increase in internet penetration. In fact, Reliance Telecom, Facebook's free basics partner in India, marketed it was a way to surf facebook & whatsapp for free.

2/ Google is giving away free internet in Railway stations in India. Unlike free basics, it gives access to the complete internet and not to a set of websites that have done a deal with facebook. No one opposed it, since it does not break net neutrality.

3/ I find it ridiculous that some folks in Western countries can start dictating what's good for the poor in India and think that the arguments of people actually living there are invalid.

I would encourage you to try to understand the issue from a local perspective by speaking to the people who live there rather than have unsubstantiated assumptions.

[Vickor]

1. Facebook has provided studies that do indicate increased internet adoption after free basics (real internet adoption, after having been introduced via Fed basics). You're welcome to read the studies and debate their bias, but the studies exist.

How the telecoms market is irrelevant to this discussion. Of course they're going to market having access to the most popular websites and apps. Hell, they probably use the same advertising when selling real internet service.

2. Also irrelevant. Internet in train stations is not comparable at any level to cellular data connectivity for 10's of millions of people.

3. You are right in this point, but I also find it presumptuous that the Indians with enough money to have internet are the ones dictating what is good for the Indian people without enough money for internet.

[slaxman]

1/ Telecom marketing is absolutely central to this discussion. It is THE way that free basics in sold on the street. Even the world bank has said free basics breaks net neutrality (http://www.scoopwhoop.com/The-World-Bank-Has-Said-Free-Basic...)

2/ Clearly you haven't the slightest idea of the number of people that travel by trains in India. In Mumbai alone, close to 8Mn people use the train to get to their place of work EVERYDAY. Many of them travel for over 2 hours at a time (over 4 hours in total). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Suburban_Railway)

3/ You have no idea how rich/poor the ones fighting for net neutrality are. You shouldn't be making such statements. It reflects badly on you. The fact is that a bunch of few activists with no financial backing were able to put an end to intense lobbying by multi-billion dollar telecom and media companies.

This is exactly what you expect from a good regulator. I am extremely happy with TRAI. They saved my bootstrapped education startup.

[rohmish]

Facebooks data has always been vague.

Live in Mumbai and while I dont travel via train every day, I do it quite often and spend hours at the platform or in the train. People actually spend 3-4 hrs in trains traveling.

Yeah. It might have, again might have some benefits I. Short run but free basics is and will hold both the people and companies back. Nobody is criticising Google and others trying to provide free access or subsidised access to internet because they actually befefit from the open internet and there companies aren't breaking net neutrality. Your farmer from rural India probably doesn't need an email address, his needs are quite different.

[kamaal]

>> NetNeutrality is a concept that makes sense in a western context where carriers are basically monopolies.

This to me sounds like Winston Churchill saying Indians don't deserve democracy as those are the luxuries of rich white populated western countries.

>>It's unbelievable how good arguments in one context, have been blindly applied to a completely unrelated context.

People rights are the same. We here in India are humans too.

>>Free markets are dead. Regulation driven by manufactured outrage or vested interests manufacturing outrage are alive and thriving.

Whole point of these protests was to keep the ecosystem for a free market alive.

>> If Christian missionaries or Hindu missions go and setup schools and libraries for free in Rural India is someone protesting differential pricing in Urban India. It's ridiculous.

India has a thriving debate on keeping religion out of schools.

>>The people who loose out are the farmer\weaver who just need an email address to be linked to the cities. Who is going to provide that now? Rural India is so vast and voiceless that they are the automatic loosers in such a debate.

You completely under estimate internet penetration in India. Nearly every body who needs it, already has access to basics. Those who don't, have bigger issues than liking somebody's Facebook status.

Those people eating rotis made from wild grass in bundelkhand have bigger issues. Their issues have more to do with irrigation infrastructure and other larger systemic issues in India in general(not the right time to discuss these issues in this thread). Not facebook or email.

[rajeshba]

Having stayed in both the US and India for significant part of my adult life, I feel qualified enough to understand both perspectives: 1. Does FreeBasics help poor people? May be it does in the short term but the long term consequences are irreversible. This is like losing forest for the trees. 2. Subsidies of various kinds have been around since Independent India and to be true, they are what have held back. To understand this further, you need to know why food subsidy bill and other rural employment schemes have failed to achieve any sort of desirable benefit and led to rout of the oldest political party. One has to agree that these subsidies are the true form of "free basics" (pun intended) someone needs to survive.

For the first time in years, India has true opportunity to break out of shackles and become a developed country. I have seen the optimism in younger lot and how entrepreneurs of all kinds are solving India specific problems. This is despite the rigid regulations which are being eased as we speak. The future only looks bright.

Peace, Rajesh

[sremani]

It will become a large economy, Developed country not in the next 2 decades.

[kopos]

Yes, it is a problem that Facebook is not the saviour.

1. But with a huge untapped market like India, won't there be any other corporations who would step in to build a Mozilla Phone or the Grameen Phone style projects in India?

2. Not even looking to these saviors, it will definitely be the Network operators themselves who will be tapping this market. Even with Free Basics, it was not Facebook that was subsidizing the content or the network costs. So if the networks were happy subsidizing with Facebook, I guess they will be happy doing the same without Facebook in the picture ... No?

[teeboy]

1. Mozilla and Grameen phone don't violate Net Neutrality. They would be warmly welcomed.

2. They can only do so with their own products now. Not Facebook.

[manigandham]

You vastly misunderstand/misjudge the connectivity of India.

[minusSeven]

I guess we should let a billionaire with obvious conflicts of interest hold control over what poor of the country should use.

[manish_gill]

Wow, such holier than thou attitude.

Anything thinking the problem is that the poor people aren't connected enough is seriously misinformed. India connected over 300mil people last year, and guess what, Facebook's effort only contributed ~1% of that number.

Not to mention, over the long term, the very real problem that the Facebook walled garden of apps would present in terms of opportunities for entrepreneurs is much more urgent in an emerging economy like India. India has tried (and is still trying) subsidies for the poor, that hasn't helped. Facebook wanted everyone to go through their platform before reaching those users. Will that help the guy from the small town who just created an app? No it won't.

So yeah, your condescending comparisons to Egypt and your "think of the poor!" argument is the exact same thing Zuckerberg said in his op-ed in Times of India. It didn't work then and it is not gonna work now.

[dang]

> such holier than thou attitude [...] your condescending comparison

Please edit such personal rudeness out of your posts to HN. It's not allowed, even when someone else is condescending and wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

[manish_gill]

A) I don't see the edit button.

B) I don't see you saying the same to the parent comment.

[dang]

The 'edit' option lasts for 2 hours. I meant please edit such stuff out of future posts.

The parent comment was wild, inflammatory, and snarky, so it was a bad comment for HN—but still wasn't personally abusive. That is beside the point here though. The rules apply to you whether someone else broke them or not. If we all just point at others, this site is lost.

[manish_gill]

Fair enough. :)

[ecobiker]

They will protest if the schools restrict to teaching Catholicism or the Vedas respectively.

[scorpion032]

Could you please share what you are smoking, that has got you this high to be so far disconnected from reality.

Here is a concise set of carefully articulated arguments: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1Yfbhrlb7a_z-pQytLPwE... which are very true in the Indian context.

Also your argument on free-market ignores, assumes the absence of a regulator. It might hold when no regulator exists. But under the given condition when a limited amount of spectrum, a natural resource is auctioned to a select number of companies and a regulator exists, how possibly can this be un-regulated?

How possibly can you hand over the power to seek rent from these content provides to these bullying telcos. What would the repercussion be to the consumers of these content.

[dang]

> Could you please share what you are smoking, that has got you this high to be so far disconnected from reality.

You can't comment like this here. Please post civilly or not at all.