Net Neutrality: 9 Things to Know About This Chatriotism

The Indian version of the Net Neutrality campaign is clearly inspired by a similar campaign for Net Neutrality that took-off in USA last year. We need to understand the nature of the forces that have pushed many Indians into the bandwagon of Chatriotism, by which I mean patriotism only on chats

By Piyush Somani

We are witnessing a huge outcry on the Internet on the issue of Net Neutrality—this campaign, currently underway in India, is essentially a global phenomenon and is inspired by the same Net Neutrality campaign that took-off in USA last year. All of us need to take a closer look at the crucial aspects of this campaign, only then we can comprehend the nature of the forces that are driving many Indians into the bandwagon of Chatriotism, by which I mean patriotism only on chats.

9 Points on Net Neutrality
1.    Today Flipkart is India’s No. 6 most visited website, Amazon.in is at No.8 in traffic rankings, and the top spots belong to Google and Yahoo. Amazon has managed to improve it’s position in India significantly during the last one year. Amazon’s traffic has quadrupled in last one year, as per the Alexa traffic trend, while Flipkart, the homegrown eCommerce giant, has not shown any improvement in it’s traffic in the last 6 months.

2.   Jeff Bezos had organised a roadshow last year in Bangalore, where he was trying to pull everyone’s attention to a fat cheque of $2 Billion. At that point of time many of us did not take his words seriously, but now Amazon is clearly marching towards the goal of becoming India’s number one eCommerce website.

3.    Flipkart stuck a deal with Airtel to offer free data usage to those who use Flipkart mobile app on their smartphones, Facebook also had a similar deal with Reliance. People did not object when Facebook stuck a deal with Reliance for “zero” data usage charges on Reliance network. The Net Neutrality Chatriotism began only when Flipkart entered into a similar deal with Airtel. If you are still confused, then you should convert $2 Billion into Rupees and figure out how much money is flowing around.

4.    Many people are still unsure about why Facebook acquired Whatsapp for $19 Billion—it seems there is very little awareness in this country about “Data Analytics”. The foreign social media Giants and eCommerce giants are making full use of Data Analytics, while we are still trying to figure out the ways by which this technology can be utilised. Whatsapp is a massive compendium of data, and where there is data, there is money.

5.    Few bloggers have been effectively used to unleash this Net Neutrality “Chatriotism” campaign on the social media. Panel discussions are being sponsored on TV, Tweets are flowing and all of a sudden there are so many Chatriots on Whatsapp and Facebook talking about Net Neutrality. Lets not forget the $2 Billion figure.

6.    Our Internet is overtly dominated by the offshore giants, and there is no scope left for any Indian social media company to enter into this highly competitive market. Bandwidth prices in India are 7–10 times higher than those in the USA or Europe, and this makes it extremely unviable for any business entity to host their data within India.

7.    The Indian ISPs are paying more than $4.5 Billion per year for data usage on the backbone of offshore ISPs. 90% of our data is hosted abroad due to the lack of data privacy related policies in India. All your data on Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Google and almost every app you use is hosted abroad due to higher bandwidth pricing and higher taxation in India. Cost of laying fibre in the seabed is ten times higher than that of fibre laid on ground, and the ISPs try to cover this entire cost from the domestic users. If some Indian companies have taken an initiative to grow their business by giving free bandwidth to the users who are paying exorbitant price for bandwidth, then why should it be a cause of such concern to the Chatriots?

8.    Flipkart has been the eCommerce champion for a long time, but the rapid growth of Amazon it will soon be pushed to the second position in India. One of the reasons behind the success of American companies in our social media and eCommerce sector is the lack of data policies and the poor taxation policies in India. In last decade, we have hardly seen any improvement in India’s data privacy policies. How can Flipkart continue to compete with Amazon when the policies in India are not favouring the domestic companies?

9.    Currently most of the print and digital media in India is hosting their data on Amazon Cloud and our domestic Data Center and Cloud business stands at only $600 Million. However, in Japan, the domestic data centre business is more than 50 times that in India. Amazon alone earns more than $600 Million per year from cloud hosting business from Indian companies.

A Sponsored Campaign
If Flipkart can offer domestic bandwidth for free, then few other companies can also take similar initiatives and our entire domestic bandwidth can become free for us—this will promote the hosting of data within India. If the offshore giants decide to pay the ISPs to give away free bandwidth to the users, then let them do so, as the ISP’s will charge them 10 times more for International bandwidth, which will help us save a chunk of the $4.5 Billion that the ISP’s have to pay for International bandwidth. Lets not forget that these offshore giants are making billions of dollars from our data.

The truth is that the so-called Net Neutrality campaign is being sponsored by the offshore giants. If the offshore eCommerce giant becomes No.1 in India, then the Indian companies will never manage to reclaim the No.1 spot. We have already lost an opportunity in the social media and cloud space, let’s not allow a Indian eCommerce company to lose it’s top spot. In a scenario where much of our data is being handled by the offshore giants, we are bound to face numerous data jurisdiction related issues, and cyber security and privacy related issues in the years to come.

The author is a MD & CEO, ESDS Software Solution. Views are personal