Net Neutrality isn’t that simple, critics fear manipulation

With stand up comedians, politicians, actors and notable personalities voicing out their support for net neutrality, thus ensuring Internet remain free and democratic all across the Web, the issue of net neutrality is yet to rest in peace.

An Indian telecom operator’s introduction of Airtel Zero last to last week added more fuel to the fire. While eCommerce giant Flipkart has publicly declared its backing out from Airtel Zero, the market watchers believe the game isn’t over. In an alarming news report by the Economic Times, it is known, the very strength of Internet—it's a vast global network—also makes it uniquely vulnerable to access manipulation. This vulnerability is greater because mobile phones have displaced personal computers as the main Internet access point for consumers.
Telecom companies can easily create access barriers, keep competition out, give unfair advantage to established Internet businesses and harm both innovation and consumer welfare. Technology entrepreneurs ET spoke to were unanimous in their view that keeping Internet free was crucial for both consumers and business.

Sunal Jain, founder and CEO of @MobiNxt, an app developer told the financial daily, "Without net neutrality, startups will fail...consumers won't be ready to pay for a new, innovative product." Jain's point was that a startup's initial investments were already formidable—in servers, government fees, HR—and an Internet that raised entry barrier by making them pay to, say, telecom companies would be a big blow for India's newest entrepreneurial force. Experts agree. Prasanth Sugathan, Counsel at Software Freedom Law Center, told ET that Digital India, a big government plan, will not take off without net neutrality that promises a level playing field.
The ET elaborates, Google search and Google's email service, Gmail, wouldn't today be the consumer-friendly, super-efficient global winners had Internet run on the idea that first movers will enjoy special access. Google's search service was preceded by Yahoo's and products like Ask Jeeves and Alta Vista. Gmail was launched after Microsoft's Hotmail had become dominant.

And thanks to net neutrality, even Google lost its Orkut, which was in play long before Mark Zuckerberg dreamed up a social network in a university dorm, was beaten by Facebook, which also outsmarted MySpace, even though the latter was backed by Rupert Murdoch. Microsoft had tried an early form of net non-neutrality by proposing a separate space on Internet called Mozaic. Mozilla was the response, a browser that worked on open source. Mozilla, incidentally, was the short and spice up form of the phrase 'Mozaic Killer', according to the Economic Times.

Indiatimes.com (a venture from BCCL, which owns this newspaper) was an early mover in the eCommerce game. But because net is neutral, a startup like Flipkart could emerge as the winner and today, Flipkart has to keep in mind where the next eCommerce winner will come from.

Everyone's favourite Internet fact provider and fact checker, Wikipedia, would have not taken off as free, open sourced content had the long-established and pay-for-use Encyclopedia been able to privilege itself on the net. India's thriving second hand goods online marketplaces, Quikr, OLX, needed a neutral net. Had the quality of their sites been affected by special access given to established, bigger players, consumers wouldn't have wasted time testing these new marketplaces, the financial daily concludes.

(Image: India Times)