Page 1 ... entrepreneurs who run their small business stores online. The ISP decides from ... Facebook has come with an anti-neutrality app Free Basics.
NET NEUTRALITY Internet has become one of the most essential things in our life after oxygen, water and shelter. Without internet we know how life goes backwards and how handicapped we become from being not able to perform the necessary things of our life. Today in-fact our life is fully dependent on internet, be it to study something, book tickets to fly home, to entertain yourself or to be updated about the latest news breaking globally we need internet, in fact the thing “Social Media” came into existence only after internet and we know how much difficult it is live to live without WhatsApp and other social networking services. Well there is an another aspect in the internet you have to care about the “Net Neutrality” Net Neutrality simply means every content on the internet is one and equal, be it a video of Michael Jackson or your video you uploaded on the internet, everything is treated one and equal, in one word “Equality”. Internet is catered globally through ISP (Internet Service Providers) who bring the internet to consumers and this makes the ISP really powerful because without them we can’t access internet, more clearly they can “control” you and make you do what they say. Web was supposed to be neutral years back but no more. Facebook, Google, WhatsApp and other companies with deep pockets can pay to ISP to deliver their mobile application or website to consumers at no extra charge or at a faster bandwidth better than its competitors, this creates a monopolistic advantages to companies as users will be forced to use the services which are free and fast to load. So basically the ISP tells us what to use and not we decide what we want actually. Many startups are born every day, imagine if there is no neutrality those startups are going to fail, this in turn kills our creativity and voice and in-fact kills the internet entrepreneurs who run their small business stores online. The ISP decides from where we buy, a fine example is if Amazon pays to ISP to provide their application to users for free and charges for other shopping apps, people will prefer to buy from Amazon as it is freely available and ISP does not charge for its usage, people will prefer to shop online through Amazon only which means others do not have competitive advantage on Amazon. One must know why ISP supports these? This is because they earn more money as they can charge you not for your internet access subscription but also for the specific apps you use, they can get more money inflow than before, as the motto of every
business is to earn a profit. They made this decision because they have spent a lot of money on the infrastructure and licenses. Knowledge is something to be shared without limits and without boundaries as it reason for the advancements of mankind, the main objective of internet is providing the right information to everyone without no discrimination. Imagine if Google is a paid app and you are forced to use Yahoo search, the information you see may not be as reliable as Google. Facebook has come with an anti-neutrality app Free Basics which provides free access to some selected websites which is only 0.001% of web. Imagine how much limited and biased that information will be. It is like living in your home without knowing your surroundings. Web was built for the betterment but with this the freedom in web will never exist. This is what is going to happen in near future if we don’t fight for net neutrality. It is high time that telecom operators and ISP start thinking about the innovation, creativity they are killing than profits. In future internet is going to replace the education with e-learning and health care with e-health facilities, use of internet has really helped mankind to make life easier and to be ready for future. So support net neutrality because there is no better teacher than the internet.
BY, ATHUL JAYARAM 4th YEAR BTECH CSE + MBA ASET
