India Planned Net Neutrality Laws

 
Following the US and EU (here), India is also about to get its version of Net Neutrality. 

Mohul Ghosh [pictured] reports to Trak.in that "The 6 member standing committee, which was formed by the Government to look into the raging Net Neutrality issue may finally announce their consensus soon. As per reports, they have received recommendations from Department of Telecom, and they are in the final stages now."

• One of the biggest positive developments to have come out from this standing committee is that, DoT has finally realized that Zero Rating plans initiated by Airtel [see "Airtel: The Internet, with Our Airtel Zero, is Neutral" - here], and Internet.org project by Facebook, are against the principles of net neutrality.
   
• Content and application providers cannot be permitted to act as gatekeepers and use network operations to extract value, even if it is for an ostensible public purpose. Collaborations between TSPs (telecom service providers) and content providers that enable such gate keeping role to be played by any entity should be actively discouraged.
   
• The committee, it seems, agrees with the suggestions of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) that local voice based services by OTTs need regulation, so that they are in par with those telecom companies which are operating in India. [see "Indian MNOs to Surcharge VoIP Traffic" - here].
  
  As per another report by Economic Times: “The committee favors regulatory oversight on the communication service providers. The committee believes that for (other) OTT application services (including those offering messaging and international voice calls), there is no case for prescribing regulatory oversight similar to communication services.”

See "Net Neutrality In India: DoT Opposes Zero Rating Plans But Suggests Regulation of Local Voice Call Service By OTTs" - here.

Airtel: "current VoIP model is not sustainable"

The story of Airtel (and other Indian MNOs) plan to surcharge VoIP services (see "Indian MNOs to Surcharge VoIP Traffic" - here) develops in two directions, as reported by FirstPost: 

• As happened in other countries after such intention had been stated (Singapore, Netherlands), the Indian regulator "will look into Airtel’s plan to charge separately for Internet call services (VoIP) offered by apps like Skype, Viber and Line that will cost up to Rs. 10,000 per GB on 2G network and up to Rs. 4,000 per GB on 3G network to a user .. 'We will look into it. Government will come back with structured response,” Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad  [pictured]said on the sidelines of ‘Good Governance Day’ event organised by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology"
  
  See "Govt to look into Airtel’s plan to charge more for VoIP calls: Ravi Shankar Prasad" - here.

• And Airtel insists - "Airtel has gone ahead and announced its VoIP data pack. The VoIP pack will cost prepaid Airtel customers Rs 75 for 75MB of data over a 28-day period ..According to the statement, Airtel claims that the current VoIP model is not sustainable in its current form hence the need for an additional data pack. “Our voice services that are enjoyed by every one of our customers provides us the capacity to continuously invest in and upgrade our networks on an ongoing basis. We, therefore, believe that VoIP services in their current form are not tenable for us as a business. As a result we will charge separately for VoIP services,” says the statement".
  
  See "Airtel wants users to pay more for Internet calls: A look at its new VoIP data packs" - here.

Courtesy of Facebook: Zero-Rated Apps for Airtel Zambia

Facebook launched its first "Internet.org" service, based on the acquired Onavo technology [see "Facebook Acquires Onavo for $100M" - here] in Zambia.

Internet.org defines "Efficiency" as one of the solution they look for: "Transmitting data—even a text message or a simple web page—requires bandwidth, something that’s scarce in many parts of the world. Partners will invest in tools and software to improve data compression capabilities and make data networks and services run more efficiently" - this is where Onavo fits [See "Optimization Announcements: Onavo Offers "3rd Party" Compression Service" - here].

Guy Rosen, Product Management Director, updates about the new service to Airtel subscriber, in Zambia:

"today we are introducing the Internet.org app to make the internet accessible to more people by providing a set of free basic services. With this app, people can browse a set of useful health, employment and local information services without data charges. By providing free basic services via the app, we hope to bring more people online and help them discover valuable services they might not have otherwise.

The Internet.org app will be available first to Airtel subscribers in Zambia [enabling] basic access to: AccuWeather, Airtel, eZeLibrary, Facebook, Facts for Life, Google Search, Go Zambia Jobs, Kokoliko, MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action), Messenger, Wikipedia, WRAPP (Women’s Rights App). Zambia uReport
 

See "Introducing the Internet.org App" - here.

Google Offers Airtel Subscribers Toll-Free Data to its Services

   
Yet another 1-800 data service (see also AT&T/Verizon, Vimpelcom, Facebook).

Read the terms carefully!

   

Airtel is "Presenting Free Zone powered by Google, an innovative service that allows you to access Google mobile services on the go at absolutely no data costs! Now with your internet-enabled mobile on the airtel network you can: Search on Google and browse the internet for FREE Send and read emails on Gmail for FREE Stay connected with your friends on Google+ for FREE"

"The free data usage on Free Zone is available up to a limit of 1GB per month .. you don’t need a data plan to use Free Zone as it is free of charge .. If you click on a link that takes you outside Google+ or Gmail or if you want to view an email attachment, you will need to pay data charges. Before you are charged, you will see a notification page, you can purchase a data plan or you can proceed further with the default pay-as-you use data charges .. When you click on a link in the search results page, you don’t pay anything. The first page(s) linking from Google Search are free, for pages thereafter you will need to pay for data usage".

"Can I use Free Zone on my computer or tablet? No, you can only use Free Zone on internet-enabled mobile phones"

Facebook Offers Free Messaging Through 18 MNOs

While offering free Wikipedia ("Wikipedia Zero" - see "VimpelCom - Free Access to Wikipedia" - here) maybe considered a true innocent move with real educational intentions, the new step by Facebook is different, and may call for more countries to consider their Net Neutrality rules.

Facebook announced in a blog post a "partnerships with mobile operators to provide free or discounted data access to Facebook messaging for their subscribers. Through this promotion, free or discounted data access will be available in the coming months on Messenger for Android, Messenger for iOS and Facebook for Every Phone, which is now optimized for chat.

"This promotion will be available from more than 18 operators in 14 countries. Operators committed to special pricing for Facebook messaging include TMN in Portugal, Three in Ireland, Airtel and Reliance in India, Vivacom in Bulgaria, Backcell in Azerbaydzhan, Indosat, Smartfren, AXIS and XL Axiata in Indonesia, SMART in Philippines, DiGi in Malaysia, DTAC in Thailand, Viva in Bahrain, STC in Saudi Arabia, Oi in Brazil, Etisalat in Egypt, and Tre in Italy".

See "Discounting Data Access to Messaging on Mobile" - here.

Wi-Fi Offloading - Booming in India but Failing For AT&T?

 
2 recent articles show a very different carrier view of Wi-Fi offloading:

Gagandeep Kaur (picture) reports to Lightreading that "In line with the global trend, Indian operators are planning to use public Wi-Fi access points to offload mobile data traffic .. Aircel Ltd. recently launched 50,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around India ..Bharti Airtel Ltd.  has also hooked up with O-Zone, which is in discussions with Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular Ltd. In addition, Reliance Communications Ltd. is also believed to be in discussions with Wi-Fi service providers"

Sanjeev Sarin, founder and CEO of O-Zone Networks said: "Globally, Wi-Fi has recorded unprecedented growth in the past two-and-a-half years. We believe India is going to experience similar growth in the coming years".

See "Wi-Fi Offload Set to Boom in India" - here.

A recent In-Stat report supports the above trend (see "In-Stat: Wi-Fi Hotspot Growth Continues to be Strong" - here). See also "Juniper Research: By 2015 63% of Mobile Traffic will be Offloaded to a Fixed Connection" - here and "How Much of Smartphone Traffic could be Offloaded to Wi-Fi?" - here.

Nevertheless, Stacey Higginbotham (picture) reports to GigaOm that an AT&T "executive noted that AT&T didn’t see Wi-Fi helping the nation’s No. 2 carrier offset congestion [see "AT&T: Times Square needs a Wifi Boost to cope with 3G Traffic" - here] because in most cases people don’t use Wi-Fi unless they are sitting still in a hot-spot. And apparently, there are plenty of people still wandering around watching YouTube videos"

The article notes that "It is possible to create a Wi-Fi network that allows a user to remain on the Wi-Fi network, even when moving. Other good work on this comes from chip firms where engineers are discussing standards to enable seamless hopping from hot spot to hot spot or perhaps even a handoff between a cellular and Wi-Fi network"

See "Why Isn’t Wi-Fi Better?" - here. See also "AT&T: We Need T-Mobile for the "wireless broadband revolution" - here.

Airtel Offers "Cricket without Buffering" on YouTube

Airtel Broadband (India) offers subscribers special QoS for the YouTube cricket channel (IPL) - while "For all others site customers will get their current plan speeds."

Happy customers are also getting an automatic upgrade 2 Mbps speed, but "The 2 Mbps bandwidth is not guaranteed all the time and is dependent of traffic. Our endeavor is to provide 2 Mbps on best effort basis." and "Upgraded speed of 2 Mbps applicable only for live cricket streaming on youtube.com/ipl page and not for other YouTube content".

See here.

All this requires Airtel to decode traffic (identify when someone is surfing to the specific YouTube URL) and change his/hers QoS policy (upgrade to 2 Mbps and prioritize this traffic) during that time.

Nice implementation of DPI and QoS to attract new subscribers!