Monday 29 December 2014

Net Neutrality - The endangered Idea

Airtel Charging Additionally for VOIP Calls.

      This New Year as a Shocking surprise to subscribers, Airtel has changed its Terms of Service to not cover VoIP (voice over internet protocol) ie Skype, Viber etc traffic under its data plans.Although
Airtel has decided to not implement new pricing right now. They will wait for TRAI to form regulation for the same.




Certain things that Still matter....
  •  Airtel hasn’t withdrawn the VoIP packs because of consumer outrage. It’s withdrawn the pack because of the impending TRAI consultation.
  •  As Airtel points out, the consultation will not just cover VoIP, but also other OTT services. As per a COAI paper, these services include Instant Messaging (IM), Applications (Apps), Cloud Services, Internet Television, IPTV, M2M – Machine to Machine (M2M) communications, Social Networking, apart from VoIP.
  •  The TRAI, as we explained, appears predisposed towards a regulation of online services, and we’re not sure if we can expect a neutral consultation from the TRAI.
 How are we effected by this ?
  • Now you would not be able to call your friends for free using internet.
  • Now mere data pack is now sufficiant now you would need to pay as per the way you use it.
  • No matter what is the amount of data balance you have in your account you have to pay more to use the VOIP services like Viber, Skype etc.  
  • Now you should start looking for the call rates specified by the service provider even for the online calls. 

What is Net Neutrality?

    The 3 principles of net neutrality are [Source: Medianama]:

  1. All sites must be equally accessible: ISPs and telecom operators shouldn’t block certain sites or apps just because they don’t pay them.
  2. All sites must be accessible at the same speed (at an ISP level): This means no speeding up of certain sites because of business deals. More importantly, it means no slowing down some sites.
  3. The cost of access must be the same for all sites (per Kb/Mb or as per data plan): This means no “Zero Rating”. In countries like India, Net Neutrality is more about cost of access than speed of access, because, well, we don’t have fast and slow lanes: all lanes are slow.
Think Before Its Too Late !!!!

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