The raging issue of net neutrality has left Internet geeks and startups alike concerned with the sanctity of free Internet. It all started with Airtel’s controversial plan Airtel Zero wherein the telecom provider creates a platform where startups could pay for data usage, to provide free access to selected websites.
In a nation which has seen a startup boom in recent times, the implications of this can be profound. For, the telecom companies can easily create access barriers, crush the healthy competitive field, give unfair advantage to established Internet businesses and harm both smaller enterprises and consumer welfare. Startups that Metroplus spoke to were unanimous in their view that keeping Internet free was crucial for both consumers and business.
Startups in Vizag, a city that has seen an emerging culture of entrepreneurship with an ecosystem of Sunrise Startup Village, feel that initiatives like Airtel Zero and Facebook’s internet.org can be a big drawback for early stage startups as it discriminates on the price, speed, access on usage of different web and mobile applications.
| April 14 | Flipkart says it won’t be part of the Airtel Zero platform after users protest by giving its app a 1-star rating on app stores. AIB video gets 1.5 million views, TRAI gets lakhs of letters |
| April 11 | Comedy group AIB posts video on YouTube titled ‘Save the internet’, asks viewers to write to TRAI through www.savetheinternet.in in favour of net neutrality |
| April 6 | Bharti Airtel launches open marketing platform Airtel Zero where customers get free apps and app providers pay data charges |
| March 27 | Telecom Regulatory Authority of India releases consultation paper on over-the-top (OTT) services, last date for comments is April 24, counter comments till May 8 |
“It can be a great platform for well established players with deep pockets as they can afford to pay the telecom operators for the access of their applications by the users. At the same time these bigger companies can literally kill the competitors and the lesser funded companies who cannot afford the money. This leads to monopoly where the customer will not have a choice to select from two different products,” feels Praveen Battula, founder of Pickup Mama, a ride sharing firm. The young entrepreneur elaborated on this through the example of his own firm. A budding startup like Pickup Mama who let users share their rides on their fleet based on time and location of commute may get crushed under the heavy weight of bigger players like Ola or Uber. “Imagine a scenario where a big competitor opts for Airtel Zero plan by paying the service provider for free usage of their app for the users. We as an early stage startup won’t have the money for choosing this platform. Our potential customers automatically will go to our competitors as the usage of their apps is free,” says Praveen.
With increasing Internet penetration in India, it is significant to understand that most startups today have survived and flourished only due to open internet. For instance, search engine Google and Google’s email service, Gmail, would have long lost the race, rather than turn out to be the super-efficient global winners that they are today, had Internet run on the idea that first movers will enjoy special access. Google’s search engine was preceded by Yahoo’s and others like Ask Jeeves. And thanks to net neutrality, even Google had to wind up Orkut, which was once the face of social network long before Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook brought about a sweeping change in the social networking world.
So the startups feel that any attempt to curb network neutrality should be deeply condemned and government should have stricter laws and regulatory frameworks that support it and take action against anyone who does not abide by these laws.
According to Vaibhav Sisinty of Crazy Heads, in the absence of net neutrality, few companies will stand up in the internet. “This will particularly affect the scores of e-commerce startups. In a city like Vizag alone there are more than 50 e-commerce startups. Net Neutrality is extremely important for small entrepreneurs, who can simply launch their businesses online, advertise the products and sell them openly, without any discrimination. Nearly 75 to 80 startups in India are digital startups and more than 60 per cent do not have access to office space. Unless there is a free market competition, the startup culture will perish,” he says.
Initiatives like Internet.org, which says some service providers will offer special rates to some consumers for accessing sites like Facebook, are also viewed as violating net neutrality. While the message sent by startups is by and large in support of net neutrality, K. Ravi Teja, founder of Unihalt – a startup that deals with biometrics system, has a slightly different take. “In 2012 when TRAI had imposed restrictions and scaled down the number of SMSes that can be sent per day, there was a huge shift towards other messaging services like Whatsapp. Similarly, in the absence of net neutrality some other platform like broadband services may gain,” he feels. Is there a way out to counter a scenario if we are forced to bid goodbye to net neutrality? “Startups can create a mobile site. Or a proxy server can be created to redirect the consumers to the site,” adds Ravi.
