"Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity."
-Nancy Pearcey
-Nancy Pearcey
So everyone in India has gone crazy about Net Neutrality. Every Tom, Dick and Harry by now has joined this discussion about saving the internet in some way or the other, may it be on social networks, blogging sites, Youtube channels, coffee chats, "chai-sutta" conversations, pee talks, and others. It is probably the most talked about topic of 2015 after Narendra Modi and the Nirbhaya documentary. Well I assume if you are reading this, you are well aware about Net Neutrality and why everyone is going nuts about it. If not, basically violating Net Neutrality means giving preference to some website/services on the internet more as compared to others. This preference maybe in terms of data charges, speed, or preferring a specific telecom service over the other. Google it for more.
Now what is Internet.org?
.png "Internet.org About page")
This is what they have described themselves as. Let's not judge for now.
A very "innovative" idea right? There's free internet to those who are not having the access to it. Everyone will now have a facebook account. He/she will have access to jobs, services, news, weather forecasts, dictionaries, chatting applications and other services/applications which join the Internet.org league.
To know which services have joined the league click the following links :-
Which countries are entitled to this "revolutionary" concept ?
For now they have made Internet.org available in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Colombia, Ghana, India, Philippines and Guatemala. For perspective I have a few stats about internet users as of 2012 in these countries :-
.png "Internet.org countries data")
On an average almost 75.37% of the population in these countries is not having access to the internet. They have indeed targeted a large chunk of the total world population.
I am sure you have a decent idea by now about this "amazing" initiative. And I am sure you have made your judgement. Below I share my views, primarily the cons of this whole idea.
The biggest loophole in this initiative is that it will eventually kill competition. Companies which have been in the market for a while will end up joining the league. They will pay the telecom companies to allow users to use their services for free. Naturally, the user base of these companies will increase. These companies will start making more profits. They will use this money for extensive branding and marketing. More users will start switching to them. The competitor company, who hasn't joined this Internet.org league will face a plummet in the user base. They won't be having enough capital for marketing. They won't reach enough users and there are strong chances the competitor company may have to shut down the shutters. Consequences? The company who had joined the league is the sole provider of that service. It is dominating the market, enjoying the monopoly. It doesn't care about new schemes, innovative ideas, RnD in the products, maintenance and user complaints. And there is no competitor in the market now who can solve these issues and come up with a product of it's own.
For example as Times Of India has joined the league, there will be more users who will be reading news on this platform as compared to other news channels. The users won't be concerned about the quality of news, quality of language and quality of journalism until they are getting to read it for free. So when 80% of India's population who isn't on the internet yet, is given access to Internet.org, they will be reading whatever shitty news this news group is publishing may it be a tweet about some actress's cleavage.(Refer image below.)
They will be reading news in crappy, moderate and unprofessional level of English, this news group is famous for. More companies will prefer to advertise on this news group as it is having an immense share of the total news readers. Eventually other news groups will face a shortage of advertisements and hence shortage of funds and hence shortage of salaries to be paid to quality journalists and hence even face a shutdown some day. So now even the 20% of the sane crowd is left with no option but to read the shitty stuff this kid Times Of India is publishing. Even if other news groups remain in the market, we definitely don't want 80% of India to think that talking about a woman's cleavage on a public platform is absolutely normal. They are better off without the internet.
Coming to E-commerce, it was announced publicly that Flipkart.com, a leading e-commerce site in India was in talks with Airtel(a telecom company) in joining Airtel Zero(a similar concept on Airtel network). The company faced major outrage on social networks with users posting screenshots of the Flipkart mobile application uninstalled. Clearly the brand value and image of the company was wounded. As a result they decided to withdraw from Airtel Zero. There was wide praise over the internet for Flipkart for taking this decision and joining the fight for Net Neutrality.
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However, let us consider the scenario where the deal might have taken place or some other e-commerce giant decides to join the Internet.org league. Consider company A to be a company who has joined the league and company B to be the one who hasn't. Now a user from the 80% population wants to buy some book on Engineering Mathematics maybe. He opens the free Internet.org application, goes to company A's website and finds the book. It costs him Rs. 500 after applying coupon codes and discounts. Now as this user is not having access to the internet, he has no options to compare the prices. He has to buy the book or recharge for say an internet pack of Rs. 50 (general one week internet charges in India). He doesn't take the risk of recharging, thinking no other site would be offering a better price. He clicks BUY NOW and the story ends here. However someone from the 20% lot will check the price on company B's website, get a deal of Rs. 400 and end up getting the best deal. Even if the 80% guy would have taken the risk of recharging, he would have saved Rs. 50 in the overall transaction. This is just the story of one transaction. Company A knows the 80% of the population is not having any option but to believe that they are offering the best prices. Eventually they'll augment the prices as compared to it's competitors and still end up getting more business. Even the delivery will get screwed up. The 80% population is not having any idea about the delivery time as offered by other companies and will happily accept the 10-15 day delivery time, as offered by company A. Now the reason this company B cannot join the league is that it is not having enough funding and capital to pay the telecom companies to offer their service for free. All they have is a vision to provide the best products at the best rates. But nobody gives a damn, or precisely nobody knows. All thanks to Internet.org.
This same logic applies to all companies offering a specific service. Say for example, cab booking service. We have two major giants for this in India, Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs. Owing to constant competition between the two, they offer amazingly high discounts to the users. These includes free rides as well ! Yes, college youth and hostel dwellers, who are aware about these services and discounts are enjoying hanging out in air-conditioned cars at fares as that of an auto-rickshaw. The competition between the two has virtually killed the need to buy a car. You have one whenever you want it. But again what if one of them joins the Internet.org league? Screw competition. They are having access to 80% of the population. They will make the 80% population believe whatever sky-rocketing rates they are offering, are the best in the market. They will make them believe that they will have to make a compromise in the service as well. And the 80% lot will have no idea there is someone ready with solutions to these issues, who is just a click/internet recharge away.
One more and major impact this can have is that on start-ups. Indian market is being ruled by Indian start-ups today. Entrepreneurs from India are offering quality services which otherwise were offered by an Indian branch of some US based giant. Start-ups are snowballing job opportunities. The salaries offered are also comparable, at times more than that offered by a well-established giant. The start-up scene is amazing in India, with an amazing no. of start-ups offering amazing innovations. India is having an orgasm of start-ups. However facts say that almost 90% of the start-ups in India fail due to dearth of funding and investors. Many established start-ups have to sell themselves to their competitors due to shortage of progressive funding. This condition prevails considering Internet.org is not in the picture. Considering it, there won't be any investor who would be willing to invest millions of dollars in a start-up, knowing the fact that the target audience is just 20% of the population and there is already a king ruling the 80% lot. In fact the investor may prefer to invest his capital in the king. Why won't the investor invest enough in the start-up so that it too can join the league? Well it takes a lot of cash to provide free internet to 80% of 1.3 billion of the population ! Only giants can afford it. The positive culture of owning a business, making an innovation, giving it to the users and selling it shall die. Start-ups shall die. Good ideas shall die. Jobs shall die. All because of Internet.org.
What is internet without a good internet connection?
When you open the internet.org website in your browser this is what you would get :-
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It seems that Internet.org has struck a deal with Reliance telecom to provide free internet. Now if you ask any Indian user who has been using mobile internet for a while now, you will come to know that Reliance offers one of the worst internet packs in terms of rates and connectivity. The internet is slow and choppy. This is when they charge for it. Predict what shall the service be, when offered for free ! Let's say that they improve the services somehow. Still just because Internet.org has got a deal with Reliance, every other telecom company will have to join the league eventually and offer free internet to everyone. They can afford it. They have enough capital (especially after the 2G scam). However when everybody is offering internet for free, there will be no competition. They might screw up the internet speed just to cover up for the free internet. Of course minor competition will make them increase the speed. But at what cost? At the cost of sensible users who get a paid data pack to use internet in it's true sense. The telecom companies will shift some of their bandwidths to the Internet.org league heroes just because there is a major crunch of the population visiting those sites. As a result other sites will face a noticeable decline in speeds. I doubt 3G will feel like "3G" anymore.
What's in for my "buddy" Mark Zuckerberg then?
Zuckerberg owns Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. These are probably the most used social networks around the world. Facebook alone has 1.3 billion monthly active users. All this without the superhero Internet.org. Now the 2/3rd of the population who didn't have an internet connection till now, will be joining Facebook soon. The no. of monthly active users will increase exponentially. And so will the cost of advertising on Facebook. Zuckerberg is going to get richer ! Now tell me if you think Internet.org was started for a "cause".
I hope this article explains why Net Neutrality is important. Without it, rich-getting-richer-and-poor-getting-poorer situation will get seeded in the service industry. Major giants will rule the industry and eat away the tiny yet quality mice.
Visit http://www.savetheinternet.in/ and support the cause. The father of internet, Tim Burners Lee also supports Net Neutrality. After all, internet was created to give equal opportunities to everyone.
