Net neutrality: The counter view

The net neutrality debate has taken India by storm, thanks to impressive campaigning by YouTube channels, celebrities and word-of-mouth publicity (basically Whatsapp and Facebook). Yet the debate is anything but neutral as is the case with lopsided representation of any issue. Proponents of net neutrality use populist rhetoric like ‘Save the internet’ portraying internet service providers (ISPs) as evil greedy corporates, completely sidelining objectivity and justify it using stripped down analogies. Analogies are fine up to a point of simplifying a complex issue to spread awareness in people but they are not faithful representations of the issue and they often sacrifice intricacies and minute details involved in the issue.

For example, internet has been compared with highways. Proponents consider different type of internet data (say web searches vs Skype) as the destination to which each vehicle is traveling and make a point that toll booths should not charge differently based on where the vehicle wants to go. Opponents could say that type of data is actually type of vehicle and charging trucks differently than cars is a common practice. Internet has also been compared with electricity and the point made is that electricity is not charged differently for different electrical appliances. But the analogy of electricity breaks down in congestion scenarios (load-shedding), as explained later.

Net neutrality campaign sails on a basic assumption that all data is equal, which in reality is not the case. As we know, services like voice calling, video streaming and TV have rapidly shifted to internet from their traditional platforms. But internet was never designed to handle such traffic. What differentiates these services from other services like web browsing is their delay sensitive nature. The packets of a video have to arrive in the given sequence within given time for it to look like a video. It is not the same as downloading a file from internet, where it doesn’t really matter whether you download it sequentially or download random pieces as long as you have whole file at the end. So although all data boils down to packets, some packets are more equal than others. Over the years, ISPs have had to upgrade their networks to support such traffic using different techniques like priority queuing. It should be evident that the cost of these upgrades was passed on to the customers equally, till now. But should that continue to happen? Net neutrality says yes and it is a problem because it’s not fair.

Let’s look at a simplified scenario. Suppose user A and B both use a broadband line but user A does delay insensitive work like downloading files while user B does video-chatting which is delay sensitive. Both users use the line so heavily (in terms of gigabytes of data they download) and so frequently (the number of times they do it throughout the day) that there is dip in their quality-of-service (QoS). But the dip in QoS of A is less than dip in QoS for B, because A only feels that her files are taking longer to download while B is irritated because his video call is low resolution and patchy. B complains to the ISP and compels them to upgrade the line (increase bandwidth, speed). To cover the cost of this upgrade, should ISP increase tariff of A and B equally? The answer might lie in real life examples.

Electricity distribution companies don’t have capacity to provide electricity round the clock so they enforce load-shedding. But a private campus says ‘charge us at higher tariff and ensure that we get electricity all the time’. (e.g. IIT Kanpur campus vs rest of Kanpur). Is it electricity-neutral? Maybe not, but is it fair? In economical sense, yes. Some might call this a flawed analogy, pointing out the difference between shared line and dedicated lease line. But it’s important to understand that lease lines are required because one can’t prioritize electricity over shared line. In fact, slow-fast lane model of non-neutral internet would be a healthy compromise between shared line and lease line. If it was possible for electricity distributors to detect and control every household appliance currently running on electricity, there surely would be a load-shedding policy which only shuts down all fans, refrigerators and coolers for specific time in summer keeping all other appliances like mixer, microwave, TV (internet too) running. Or there would be a policy that charges air-conditioner usage higher than other appliances. Selective charging, if done properly, would only result in better value for money for end user as against charging a flat rate for all appliances.

Apart from being unfair, net neutrality takes away incentives of ISPs to upgrade/expand their infrastructure and might slow down rapid diffusion of internet to remote corners of the country, for two reasons. First, net neutrality roots out any possibility of cross-subsidization where ISPs would generate more revenue from one kind of data and use it to provide access to rest of the internet at lower rates. Second, even if the assumption that ISPs are greedy is true, they will either try to generate revenues by charging specific data at higher tariff or in case of net neutrality, overall tariff will be increased. Latter case would prove to be a roadblock in getting new users on-board. 

The worst thing any regulation could do is to strangle innovation and net neutrality threatens to do exactly that based on a grim picture of future. A non-neutral net or progressive net (on the lines of progressive taxing) as I’ll refer to it henceforth, holds immense potential for innovation in business strategies and technology. If there is no way of generating higher revenues, ISPs will have little incentive to put money in research of better compression and data delivery standards, or newer technologies to solely deliver specific content.

It is a common fear that smaller enterprises will not be able to compete in progressive net as bigger players will be able to dominate their content using “fast lanes”. But it is common knowledge that even in neutral environment a company with huge seed money is always at advantage and tries to drive out smaller players. Yet smaller players survive using innovative strategies (e.g. Flipkart’s huge discounts, Xiaomi’s e-commerce) and they still will. If net neutrality tries to bar potential unethical practices to provide a level-playing field to everyone, it has to be ensured that valid business models like Airtel Zero which may not appear net-neutral, are not wrongfully penalized.

Last point in favor of progressive internet is the self-regulatory nature of free market and the power of consumers. The fear that all ISPs and telcos will turn non-neutral at once is unfounded. Especially looking at the public outcry, there will be ISPs who will be willing to provide neutral internet plans. Even if other telcos turn non-neutral, state owned telcos like BSNL may still provide neutral net. While it is true that enough competition does not exist in case of ISPs, newer players like Google Fiber are already emerging. At best what net neutrality can do is to ensure that consumers are given a choice whether to pay for all content at the same rate or different content at different rate.

So is net neutrality completely pointless? No. There are some real concerns, major one being unethically putting someone’s content in slow lanes. Big players should not be able to pay ISPs to throttle someone else’s content. In US, these unethical practices can be tackled under anti-trust laws. In India similar acts like Competition Commission Act don’t yet specifically cover the domain of ISPs and web-based services.

While fears that ISPs will only focus on fast lanes and other users will languish in slow lanes are stretched, they still are very real. It’s necessary to ensure that even the slow lanes are provided a certain quality-of-service which would keep ISPs on their toes to continuously upgrade the infrastructure.   

There is no doubt that internet has become our gateway to knowledge and it is necessary that everyone has access to this knowledge. But it is also important to understand that basic access to internet may be granted faster through non-neutral means like Facebook’s internet.org even if it is money-making business concealed behind charity. 

Finally it’s important that uncalled-for measures are not taken under unfounded fears. While addressing valid concerns, we should be wakeful and have progressive outlook so as not to miss a world full of interesting possibilities and innovation.