Since the last few days, whenever I open my Facebook account, I find an unseen notification (yay!). When I see what it's about, this is what I find -
"[Some random person] sent a message to TRAI about Free Basics. Send one yourself"
For those who don't know what this notification is about, I would like to tell you that if enough people send that message to TRAI, soon some basic internet services would be free to people. Sounds attractive, eh? It's not.
Do You Know What Net Neutrality is?
Remember net neutrality? It was such a trending topic that everyone talked about it. Everybody supported it. Net neutrality means that all websites are on equal footing. The Internet Service Provider cannot decide which site costs how much to view. That way, all websites will stay in competition. For example, imagine Google pays your ISP to load it's web pages faster than Yahoo Search. What would happen is people would stop using Yahoo Search totally (because of the slow loading speed). There you go. Yahoo Search is - all of a sudden - out of competition.
So much for Net Neutrality, how is it related to Free Basics?
Free Basics is an initiative taken up by Facebook and it aims to provide some basic internet services for free - to everybody. This does seem to be good for India, however, it has drawbacks. Who would pay to visit a website when they can simply use another free website that serves the same purpose? Thus, Free Basics would eliminate much of the online competition.
Remember 10th standard economics? Competition among businessmen is always good for consumers.
When online firms have nobody to compete with, there might even be a gradual decrease in the quality of service they provide. Moreover, there is another problem. Besides eliminating competition, Free Basics also stops potential entrepreneurs from emerging. Let's take another example. Let's say someone makes a search engine much better than google (imagine. just imagine). That person wouldn't even be able to start his business, because the whole world already visits Google, and would keep visiting Google because it would be free to use.
So, beside eliminating the current competition, Free Basics can also eliminate future competition.
So What Should You Do
Well, you should do what is right, and that's something only you can decide. Anyway, here is my opinion. You should ignore that notification completely. Don't send any type of message to TRAI. Do not even send a message saying you disapprove of Free Basics. This is because if you do send a message, everybody else would get a notification about it. BUT, that notification would not include what you said. And whenever somebody clicks on it, there is a default message ready for him/her to send. And most people would end up thinking that that default message is what you sent, and they'll send the same thing. Facebook wins.
Ignore that notification, and share this post if you feel it's right. Cheers.
Do note, Free Basics can be really helpful in some cases. I just pointed out the drawbacks.
You make good points.
ReplyDeleteBut I believe that "Net neutrality" recently died, in the US (since that's where most of the Internet is governed from).
Here's a thought; India has a much larger population than the US. It's certainly got a vast and growing middle class, almost all of whom are online. What would happen if India set up its own Internet (infrastructure and regulation) to compete head on with the American one? Surely, even the mere threat of India's doing so should be enough to ensure that America would have to consider the wishes of one of the world's largest Internet users.