
About Internet.org and net neutrality - prostoalex
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881
======
kamikazi
Here's the full reply from India's SaveTheInternet.in coalition exposing
Facebook's chicanery --> [http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology-
topstories/mr-zucke...](http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology-
topstories/mr-zuckerberg-facebook-is-not-and-should-not-be-the-
internet/article1-1337944.aspx)

This piece can be instructive and useful to others in US/Europe & any country
where such deceptive zerorated plans are trying to make their way in. Be it of
FB or anyone else.

Zuck wants a walled-garden version of internet (with FB as gatekeeper) to be
made free for the poor. We're saying poor Indians should have access to the
same full open globally-connected internet as we all take for granted. And
that free & fair competition will & should take care of things like access on
the cheap, sachet-mktg etc.

As of today on my Vodafone India plan I can get a 2G plan starting for 22¢.
Poor Indians that Zuck wants to target with his zerorated internet dot org
spend $0.5 on ringtones. This twitter thread from Andresseen & Horowitz
Parner, Benedict Evans has a good discussion about pricing & cheap access -->
[https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/588511768244162561](https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/588511768244162561)

I will encourage anyone who is following NetNeutrality debate globally to keep
an eye on India. (China is out of bounds). That's where all the action is.

And if you can help us punch above our weight at global level - please connect
with us.

~~~
icebraining
_Zuck wants a walled-garden version of internet (with FB as gatekeeper) to be
made free for the poor. We 're saying poor Indians should have access to the
same full open globally-connected internet as we all take for granted. And
that free & fair competition will & should take care of things like access on
the cheap, sachet-mktg etc. (...) As of today on my Vodafone India plan I can
get a 2G plan starting for 22¢._

I agree, but then why the wailing and gnashing of teeth? They've released an
inferior product for only 22¢ less than the superior alternative, doesn't seem
like such a threat. Just let it fail, no?

Personally, I do think the name is fraudulent (and they should be forced to
change it), but the service in itself seems like a non-issue to me.

~~~
kamikazi
"You must be on the Reliance network to use Internet.org. If you'd like to
access these websites for free, use a SIM card from Reliance" \--

What I see when I visit internet.org from my wired & wireless, non-Reliance
telco.

Think of this as FB passing off 'free AOL CDs in the mail' as The Internet in
India for millions of first timers who are getting sub-$100 smartphones, using
poor villagers--& benevolent Wikipedia to provide covering fire.

~~~
icebraining
_Think of this as FB passing off 'free AOL CDs in the mail'_

Yeah, and what a stronghold AOL has now over the US market, eh?

~~~
kamikazi
Yeah, so let's repeat that - this time in a vastly different market, way
crazier demographic variety, far different socio-economic & growth conditions
and tech/internet revolution which has exponentially changed for good since
then.

What can go wrong? At the most we are risking only a generation of Indians
thinking FB as internet (just like Indonesians) who will then graduate to
think Chrome icon as the browser (just like people thought of IE shortcuts on
their Win95 desktops).

Let's allow the same mistakes but this time execute it better. I can get
behind that.

------
archinal
An interesting exchange in the comments on this post:

> Sagar Kamat: Mark The aspect of Internet.org that is in conflict with Net
> Neutrality is that FB chooses which services are offered for free to the
> users. That's an attractive way of getting new users hooked onto popular
> services. Why not just sponsor a certain data cap for users instead and let
> them decide which services they want to use? That will be in line with ur
> vision of internet for all as well as Neutral

> Mark Zuckerberg: We actually don't choose the services by ourselves. We work
> with local governments and the mobile operators to identify local services
> in each country.

> Cheenu Madan: So Mark, can you explain then how internet.org works in India?
> Did Reliance choose the services? Why then, Bing Search over Google Search
> (clearly better) for example?

~~~
xtrumanx
I hate it when people answer questions like that. Surely its obvious to Mark
that the issue was some entity, be it Facebook or a local government, is
making the decision of which services were to be available instead of letting
the user decide which service they wish to use.

Yet he decides to side-step the issue. Why bother answering comments if you're
not really going to address the issues concerning people?

------
MichaelGG
... Sounds much like doublespeak. There's no actual addressing any concerns.
Just "think of the chil^H^H^H^H villagers!"

"We fully support net neutrality." ... "Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle
any other services"

So if I try to access my own website via Internet.org, how does that work
again?

Also note how instead of saying "certain websites", Internet.org provides
access to "basic internet services". Slick try to redefine "basic" in terms of
his own website. He says it "lowers the cost of accessing the internet" ...
but that's not really true, since you cannot access the Internet via this
system, only select services.

"saying that offering some services for free goes against the spirit of net
neutrality. I strongly disagree with this."

No two rational people can disagree (with the same priors). Therefore saying
you disagree is a cute/passive aggressive way of saying "you're wrong" or "you
have wrong information". There is no doubt that "zero rating" aka "get FB for
free" is directly against the concept of net neutrality. You can say you
"disagree", but that's simply incorrect.

On the plus side, at least his piece was rather heavy handed so hopefully FB's
goal will be clear to others and continued opposition. (Hopefully...)

P.S. _The_ Internet is usually capitalized. (I know, I'm old or something.)

------
bjelkeman-again
There is a lot of double-speak in this post by Zuckerberg. And it starts with
a thinly veiled "think of the children". He talks about "basic Internet
services", not clarifying that this is only access to a few sites, including
Facebook, and says they respect net neutrality. As if those two things were
not contradictory. To me this feels like it is about a market grab,
camouflage, probably even to himself, as a humanitarian effort.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
It's a sneaky ploy to become to gatekeeper. How come e-mail isn't a "basic
internet service" but FB Messenger is?

Internet.org is neither the Internet nor a .org.

~~~
espadrine
How can you even create accounts on most websites without an email address,
including on Facebook?

I think the intent is to generate revenue from Facebook ads while getting good
press from developing countries. Still, I'm glad it generated a backlash.
Enforcing a data cap for free accounts would definitely make more sense.
Internet is the whole shebang, not just a limb.

------
awalton
"It's too expensive to make the whole internet free."

Translation: "It is not lucrative enough to us to make the whole internet
free. We only want you looking at things where we stand to make money off of
you, not anyone else."

Sure, Facebook wants to help connect some of the poorest people in the world,
but only if it's the company that stands to make money from the proposition.

Remember kids, if you're not paying, you're the product.

~~~
nickysielicki
This.

If Mark wanted to do something altruistic, he would not whitelist good sites,
he would just blacklist Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, and others. If expensive
bandwidth is what's limiting him, he can work around that.

But this isn't an altruistic move. This is a business move.

------
brianpgordon
It's incontrovertible that internet.org throws net neutrality to the wind. The
only question is whether, in this case, it's worth it. I guess he makes a
decent argument in that regard, but it's disingenuous to claim that this isn't
"violating the spirit of net neutrality."

------
zefei
It seems most people here are against this because of Facebook's (or other
service providers') gain from it, but no one is arguing against Mark's actual
point: "some access is better than none at all", which I think is more
important.

Internet.org may not succeed at the end, because of the conflict of interests
in many parties (corporate and political) involved in its running. But the
idea of providing limited access for free is IMO very good and important, and
arguing details before anything being done is at best unproductive.

All the people here already have internet access, and most without any limit
or censorship. But can you try to think of this from POV of the users of
internet.org? Not to think for the children in poor regions, but think AS
those children.

Let me explain from my experience, where limit of access mostly comes from
heavy censorship.

I was born in China at the end of the Culture Revolution. Fortunately, my
family still had got TV when I was in elementary school, and we had internet
when I was in high school. All the information, programs, news, cartoons,
whatever contents from TV or internet were heavily censored. They were
censored so heavily that I, as a kid, could not realize that they were
censored at all. But I still enjoyed a lot of information, entertainment,
knowledge from TV and internet as a kid. As an adult now, I hate and want to
fight those censorship with all I have. But without TV or internet, I'd very
unlikely to be able to code, or to write English, or anything I enjoy doing
today.

To me, the limit of access that's forced by government doesn't differ much
from the ones by corporates. But having some limited access to information is
absolutely critical, when the ONLY other option is no access.

~~~
cmadan
> "some access is better than none at all"

Not really.

Mark said that governments and telcos decide which services go on internet.org

Do you really want the government (or even your telco) deciding which news
source that the poor (who are easily influenced) read?

Leaving aside the preservation of competition, government deciding what news
services to provide to the poor has huge political ramifications, especially
when every media outlet has a bias towards one end of the political spectrum
or other.

In this case, no access is far better than some access. Just because it didn't
play out as bad as it could have in China, doesn't mean that the same will
happen in India. See North Korea for example.

~~~
icebraining
_the poor (who are easily influenced)_

Thanks for making plain what others are implicitly saying. The arguments
against zero-rating in general always seem to be based on the argument that
the poor are stupid and as their superior, we know better. Paternalism at its
finest.

In the case of Internet.org, I agree that the name is misleading bordering on
fraud, and shouldn't be allowed. But besides that, how about letting people
choose if they prefer to pay for full Internet access?

~~~
nileshtrivedi
No, it's the opposite. They are saying let the poor decide what services are
essential for them, and not facebook/telcos/government.

~~~
icebraining
The poor already decide by choosing between Internet.org and other plans, like
the Vodafone one someone posted in another comment.

------
tempestn
> Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting
> access to services you want to use.

Internet.org provides some services for free and other services... not at all.
That certainly sounds like "limiting access" to me. He's saying they don't
limit access to other services since you can keep paying for them exactly as
you are now... which is _exactly_ the same as the argument that speeding up
traffic from some sources doesn't hurt anyone, since it's not like they're
slowing down traffic from others; you can keep getting it exactly as you are
now.

This is what net neutrality is all about. How can a non-free service compete
on a level playing field with a privileged, free service (of which Facebook is
one, naturally)?

------
awalGarg
I am not a Facebook user (let's say, the reason is x) so can't comment there,
but he seems to be avoiding the main question. He was asked why _" Facebook
gets to chose which services will be available"_ to which he replied _" telcos
do, not Facebook"_, but the spirit of the question remains unanswered. Why
telcos? How does that _not_ conflict with net-neutrality?

------
anant90
There are two quotes from above I'd like to call out here:

1\. "Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting
access to services you want to use." \- in a country where there are huge
economic obstacles to connectivity and the internet is not affordable to
everyone, offering certain services for free automatically discriminates
against the services that are left out since they are not deemed to be
"essential" by the government or local mobile operators. Also note that these
countries don't have the most ethical of the governments (yes, I'm from India
and have seen how the government works pretty closely), and mobile network
operators are ultimately responsible to the share price of their stock, not
the overall social welfare of the country.

2\. "Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast
lanes -- and it never will." This is true, but if one looks from a slightly
different perspective, free lanes are as bad - maybe worse - than fast lanes.
One has to admit that internet.org is ending up creating free lanes for
certain services, in a country where the toughest obstacle to internet
connectivity is not lack of availablity of mobile network infrastructure, but
the economic situation of the country's poorest poor.

Like with all tough cookies, the solution doesn't lie in suggesting that this
is better than nothing. It lies in admitting to the apparent problems in the
internet.org ecosystem (clear lack of net neutrality) and working out the
answers. A solution lies in offering the internet as a whole for free upto a
basic data usage (limited by bytes, not services), working on innovations like
the low flying drones or loon style projects which place mobile internet
infrastructure in places where there's none (I know internet.org is already
working on this), working on business and technical innovations to enable the
mobile operators offer better, faster and cheaper services to more people and
finally, working on faster, cheaper mobile devices. ($50 is not cheap enough
in a country where median per capita income is as low as $616 (2013) - in
comparison, the same figure for US is around $26k)

I understand internet.org was founded by Facebook to connect the remaining 4
billion - and it's a very noble initiative. But we have to be very careful of
the long term.

------
nphyte
Reading facebooks values, it makes me extremely sad to see what they're doing.
No one wants to stand in the way of providing access of the internet to the
poor. But it has to be done right. Saying that telecom providers recommend
these services without any bias is untruthful. Furthermore internet.org is an
initiative to empower people with tools. Not providing them unused/ rarely
used services. I get that one of the values is move fast and break things but
at what cost?

~~~
blumkvist
Of course he gets what the problem is. You're being very gullible.

~~~
nphyte
fair point. edited

------
bontoJR
The general goal of the Internet.org project is honorable, it's a huge step
into the future, giving to everybody an internet connection. Now, I have few
concerns with timing and the modus operandi:

1\. Facebook is actually working with governments in countries where poverty
rate is extremely high, corruption is everywhere and the outcome is a logic so
broken, that I can't see any advantage. They will have access to Facebook, but
not to drugs, medical help or water.

2\. Each country has a list of available services for free, this will
discriminate some of others and, IMO, this is clearly against net-neutrality.

3\. I am scared to see a company like Facebook (would be the same with Apple
or Google) collaborating to expanding internet in the world, it looks like
they are taking the chance to address all these new markets using the
financial power they benefit.

They are all concerns based on opinions and assumptions, I hope to be proven
wrong and that Facebook is doing it for a good, open world.

------
pmontra
"Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast
lanes -- and it never will. We’re open for all mobile operators and we’re not
stopping anyone from joining. We want as many internet providers to join so as
many people as possible can be connected."

Dear Mark, this open-to-ISP initiative is one way to look at what you're
doing. Another one is closed-to-most-of-the-Internet. Let's turn it into an
open-to-all-Internet initiative (web sites, mail, etc - all protocols), with
no other costs for service providers (web sites, etc) than the amount of money
they're paying to get online right now. Then I'll believe you're really trying
to help those poor people by giving them free access to the full Internet, not
only to what you think they must be allowed to access. Forgive me if I'm
skeptical about how unbiased you are about it. Thanks.

------
codemac
> Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast
> lanes

Nah, no one cares about the carpool lanes -- they care about the toll roads.

~~~
calbear81
The throttle is that any other service requires a data plan and that is not
free.

------
bandrami
Oddly, although this is how the NN debate gets talked about (providers
limiting consumer access), _that 's not what the FCC has been arguing about in
the US_; they've been arguing about whether people can build private fiber
between tier 1's and selectively route over it (in practical terms, it's
always been "route my own traffic only").

For that matter, in the US an ISP _can_ say "I refuse to route certain traffic
to and from certain nodes"; if this were not the case you couldn't have any
RBLs. India's legal situation is different from the US's (I've lived in India
for the past couple of years and all I can say is that the legal situation is
byzantine, confusing, and often self-contradictory) but that same basic
capability is there: a provider can refuse to route arbitrary traffic. And
this as-implemented is seen as a Good Thing.

So... where's the line for that? Is there a legal difference between a small
whitelist and an arbitrarily-large blacklist? Does the intention of the
provider matter? (And if it does, how long until "congestion" gets thought up
as a way to limit traffic to the 16 walled gardens they want?)

------
nickysielicki
If internet.org were to succeed, it will be SO interesting to see all the fun
hacks that are created to proxy through the whitelisted sites.

------
captn3m0
What is really missing from this debate is how cheap the internet already is
in India. It is not something that needs to be distributed for free.

On my old Nokia phone, I didn't even subscribe to a data plan, and was thus
charged at per kb (I'm not sure exactly how much), but I used to read HN,
check my email, facebook and much more over Opera Mini.

It hardly cost me 2 INR/day. Now that I am on a smartphone, costlier options
are much better for me, since my smartphone uses far more data. But if you can
own a 6000 INR smartphone, you can surely pay 100-200 bucks per month for data
charges.

------
thethrows
So what are the people who are pulling from internet.org proposing? Are they
supplying more open internet? Are they providing access to these
people/locations to all websites? Are they doing ANYTHING?

~~~
testguy34
Of course not.

------
thomasfromcdnjs
It's amazing what a little engagement can do for public perception.

------
toolshed
It's undoubtedly a laudable goal, but why obfuscate the reality that mobile
carriers are merely concerned about profit margins? I fail to see how this
doesn't embody the pure essence of Net Neutrality. There is no shame in
stating that mobile carriers must recoup costs, but I understand why he steers
clear; the natural corollary is relatively unpalatable. To what level are
Indian telecoms being remunerated for this "service?" If I had to venture a
guess: rather handsomely.

------
lewisl9029
Not entirely on topic, but sometimes I wonder what would have become of
companies like Google and Facebook if they never went public.

I realize that the extra capital helps them better expand and compete, but
does every startup have to aim to take over the world?

What's wrong with just providing a useful service to society and having enough
revenue to cover your expenses and grow at a modest, organic pace without
having to compromise your values?

------
awalGarg
I will go ahead and show Internet.org about how wrong they are in thinking
that offering a few basic services will cover people up. Say they offer,

Google (or any search engine) - the search is useless if the sites returned
are not accessible for free. Offering google for free and blocking the rest is
like saying, "Hey, you can see all these trailers for free. Wanna see the
movie? Pay us a truck load of money." And no, the "preview" is not enough. I
cannot ask question on Stackexchange from the "preview", for instance.

Facebook - The people are most likely already communicating with each other.
How sharing "pics" and "liking them" for _free_ will give them "raw knowledge"
is beyond my imagination. I, among many other people, am not a Facebook user
and enjoy my life with all the productivity in the world.

Wikipedia - The thinking that wikipedia contains all the knowledge in the
world, and we can get all the information from it is utter crap. Say a poor
person in a village wants to learn web development. Tell me how exactly does
Zuckerberg think that Wikipedia can teach him JavaScript? Wikipedia provides
overviews, stories, and some details, but it can hardly be considered as the
library of all books.

News sites - seriously? Radio stations are free, much more helpful, feasible,
and have a more affordable infrastructure. And they would be limiting users to
only selected news sites so the chances that they get a one-sided view of
things is more than likely.

Skype - In India, the rates of phone calls is ridiculously cheap. Indian
service providers provide the cheapest phone call rate in the entire world.
The problem is not cost of the call rate, it is the lack of infrastructure.
Network problems, dropping lines etc.

Cleartrip - Let me tell you something, no _poor_ person will be able to use
cleartrip or the likes to book anything since poor people in India don't sit
in flights, they don't have credit and debit cards to make online transaction,
they don't book hotels.

Anyways, getting a _usable_ internet enabled device is more of problem, IMO.
The Indian government still took the most authentic step to help the
situation, by making the world's cheapest tablet (Aakash) with a fair spec
set. If Internet.org expects poor children to stare at a 3" dull screen
showing wikipedia or anything in tiny text all night which can harm their
eyes, they really need to think again.

------
fight4neutral
In case it in case it can help with anything:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32wtn5/my_attempt_at_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32wtn5/my_attempt_at_breaking_the_marketing_and/)

------
sand87ch
Internet.org is in clear violation of net neutrality and zuckerberg is trying
to fool people.well does he want to do charity?do one thing.give at least
500mb 3g data free for all and foot the bill for it.now isn't that how charity
works?

------
octatoan
If Mark really believes in what he's saying, he shouldn't object to only
making nonprofits like Wikipedia or OCW a part of the initiative. Facebook
isn't an essential good.

------
rjaco31
> Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast
> lanes -- and it never will.

Wait what? It's basically blocking everything except their services, did I
miss something?

------
em3rgent0rdr
Quick, someone develop a way to tunnel any website through Facebook. :)

Maybe disguise the http traffic as seemingly legit FB conversations and/or
media.

~~~
MichaelGG
Already done, look it up. But it's also irrelevant. They'll play a cat and
mouse game if it got serious (FB will have the upper hand). Or just cut off
abusers. Essentially anyone who could set this up can find a better way to
access the net.

------
Pyxl101
One issue that it seems like Mark isn't acknowledging is the fact that
participating in Internet.org will give a huge competitive advantage to the
companies that are able to offer their services through that platform for
free, however it is that they're able to arrange that. How could a competitor
to one of these websites compete in that market segment when, in order to
access it, you need to be on the "paid" Internet, while Facebook and these
other services are available for free? How do you compete with free? (For
example, a music streaming company HungamaPlay is available through
Internet.org. How could a competitor reasonably achieve similar market share
when the competitor's service causes users to be charged for data, while
HungamaPlay is available for free through Internet.org?)

Will this create a further lock-in effect where, once users become accustomed
to the sites they're using on Internet.org, they will keep using them for free
even after paid Internet is affordable for them?

> Arguments about net neutrality shouldn’t be used to prevent the most
> disadvantaged people in society from gaining access or to deprive people of
> opportunity. Eliminating programs that bring more people online won’t
> increase social inclusion or close the digital divide.

Giving things away for free may not be the best way to accomplish that.
Especially when the free services seem to favor certain business significantly
under terms that appear to be secret. While it's true that some people are
saying that no connectivity is preferable, these arguments are false
dichotomies. If one's goal is connectivity, then one can provide access to the
/entire/ Internet. If sites need to sign up in some program to cover the
mobile networks' data transfer charges, or provide an ultra-low-bandwidth
version of their site, then so be it -- but be transparent about how those
agreements work, and keep the program open to any website to join in a
straightforward way. Since Facebook chooses which services are available,
Facebook essentially becomes the kingmaker for what services will become
popular in those regions. How does Facebook know that it's reasonable to
include HungamaPlay, for example? What if they're involved in payola, and
they're offering streaming music for free only for artists that pay to have
their music circulated widely? Now an artist needs to be available on
HungamaPlay in order for their music to be widely known on the Internet in the
region.

There are many concerning claustrophobic effects like this.

> It's too expensive to make the whole internet free. Mobile operators spend
> tens of billions of dollars to support all of internet traffic. If it was
> all free they'd go out of business.

Mark seems to be implying here that mobile networks are eating the cost today
as a form of charity. Is that true? The implication is that scaling up the
program will cause mobile networks to lose money. That would be the case if
these mobile networks have decided to offer the service as a form of charity,
but will not be the case if other companies like Facebook are covering the
data transfer charges for Facebook users. What's really going on, and why is
it difficult for me to learn about how these deals work? If I want to pay the
costs to include my site, why can't I do that? (And if this is an option, then
why isn't it a simple part of the dialog around this initiative?) Has anyone
said, "Every website is welcome to participate - here's how to do it"? The
Internet.org website seems to be largely marketing flash, and scant on real
information about how website owners could participate and make their site or
app available.

Furthermore, the argument seems shaky. If the mobile network is willing to
donate $X worth of data per month per user for use of "basic services", then
why not permit a similar amount for any website? With this approach, offering
free access to the entire Internet does not need to cost more than the cost
they're planning for now -- except the users get more value from unrestricted
access. The fact this is not how it works suggests to me that Facebook is
paying the mobile network to make it all work out, and is probably bringing in
other services besides Facebook in part to legitimize the initiative (the goal
being to drive growth in developing countries). Whoever is paying for this
believes it's worth their while from the competitive advantage they're
getting. Which is fine, but let's not pretend that charity is the primary goal
in that case.

Folks might feel like there is less of a "slippy slope problem" if there was
more transparency on what it takes for sites to join Internet.org. What are
participating sites paying to be part of the program, or are they part of it
for free, and if so, who makes the decision to include them, and on what
basis? What would it take for me to make my blog available on Internet.org?
Are mobile networks or Facebook now in charge of deciding whether there's
merit to including a site? They must be, if they're the one deciding which
sites to offer, and are covering all the cost themselves. Alternatively, if
sites are charged to become members, what are the charges, and how can I
choose to participate? Is the program open to any sites, and if not, what are
the criteria for inclusion? Are there exclusivity deals?

If the goal of Internet.org is to be taken seriously as a charitable endeavor,
all of this information should be publicly available. (And if it is, I would
appreciate a pointer to it, since I haven't been able to find anything on
Internet.org) And if it's not a charity but a business endeavor, then the
principals should understand that folks will be concerned with handing
significant "monopoly" power to one entity to define what the Internet is in
those areas. The initiative is in danger of seeming like a coalition of
companies that have decided that they want to expand into emerging markets,
and have banded together to create a monopoly on information by offering it
for free there, while excluding competitors from the network and putting them
at a disadvantage by forcing them to compete with free.

~~~
kamikazi
> It's too expensive to make the whole internet free. Mobile operators spend
> tens of billions of dollars to support all of internet traffic. If it was
> all free they'd go out of business.

>> Mark seems to be implying here that mobile networks are eating the cost
today as a form of charity. Is that true?

Patently untrue. On the contrary telcos are raking it in hand over fist ever
since data usage started shooting up. If anything the massive popularity of
WhatsApp, Skype, Viber and explosive growth in India's own home-brewed tech
startups is a godend for these telcos. The avg nontech Indian was already
getting home-delivered $2 groceries & $5 ladies suits from solopreneurs
marketing on WhatsApp. Increased data usage helps telcos.

Instead of riding on the coattails of these massive data services and not
looking at a gifthorse in the mouth, instead of strengthening their backbones
& support they still employ 90s era CSRs (hundreds thousands of em) who answer
every support call with Start Internet Explorer, Click Options, Delete
cache..delete history, Click Windows icon on bottom-left of screen & Restart
computer....still didn't work? Ok please write to us with your query at
support@unfairtel.com and we will escalate this ticket with a turnaround time
of 48-72 hours.

Here's a definitive explanation with chart & figures (from telco's own
disclosed numbers) by one of the most widely followed financial blogger in
India - [http://capitalmind.in/2015/04/telecom-companies-are-not-
losi...](http://capitalmind.in/2015/04/telecom-companies-are-not-losing-money-
to-data-services-the-net-neutrality-debate/)

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RSUDHARSAN
He the fellow breaking internet into pieces and breaking net neutrality.

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RSUDHARSAN
He is the fellow breaking internet into pieces for promoting facebook

