Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

>Two key aspects of the Net Neutrality consultation that remain: firstly, the proposed requirement for providers of VoIP services like Whatsapp, Viber and Skype to obtain a government licence, which would mean that telecom operators could be required to treat traffic from unlicensed VoIP providers differently from the rest, and secondly, allowing telecom operators the ability to slow down and speed up websites, giving them the ability to play king-makers and gate-keepers. Citizens should be vigilant, as always, and should consider participating in this process in the future. SaveTheInternet opposes any form of licensing of Internet Services. This includes VoIP.

So even though discriminatory pricing is not allowed, operators can still slow/speed down/up apps and websites. Seems to me a key aspect of net neutrality has not been upheld.

For eg, what if an ISP decides to "slow down" Netflix to 0.1 kbps? I believe this is a wholly unsatisfactory outcome of the entire national debate over the last several months.

India has different set of laws on it. It's not allowed to create slow lanes in the first place. It's also not allowed to provision a broadband speed of lower than 512 kbit which is due to be revised to 1 mbit/2 mbit minimum depending on where you are later this year. Similar minimum speed rules exist for 2G, 3G, and now LTE.

This new ban works alongside other laws. Broadband operators must adhere to existing neutrality laws, minimum speed laws, laws regarding unlawful banning of websites.

To answer your question, no, a Netflix lane of 0.1 kbps is not allowed, and never was. Even service provider assisted parental control is not allowed. Airtel had to backtrack Quickheal offer a couple years back because somebody saw it as operator influence. You must implement parental control at home, and your service provider can't sell you the software or that service.

You are contradicting what was written on savetheinternet.in. I don't know which is more accurate. FWIW I haven't seen any minimum speed requirement. I've only seen that broadband has a minimum speed. And I've seen ISPs advertise "high speed Internet" to get around it.

They got busted for high speed internet thing. Currently, all 3 major providers -- Airtel, BSNL, Reliance adhere to rules. All the new ones like Tikona do too. Can you show me a live example of a lower speed internet available anywhere?

The rules regarding minimum speed for 3G/2G/LTE are in spectrum bid documents.

Its a step in the right direction. TRAI was only deciding on differential pricing not slow/fast lanes and currently no ISPs are implementing slow/fast lanes whereas differential pricing (i.e. free plans for Facebook, Whatsapp, their own shitty apps etc) were all over.

>no ISPs are implementing slow/fast lanes

How do we know that? And even if they aren't, they will start doing it.

This was a great chance to disallow all of that crap but instead TRAI has been tempted to regulate voice apps, a task that they are simply incapable of performing effectively anyway.

The new regulations by TRAI does not mention anything about regulation of voice apps (or about slow/fast lanes).

I think you have misinterpreted the comment by SaveTheInternet.in. What they're saying is that while differential pricing has been dealt with in accordance with NN principles, there are two more battles which are going to be fought i.e. i. Defeating the proposal to regulate voice apps ii. Ensuring that no slow/fast lanes are there on the Internet.

Its a "yes, we won a major battle but the war is not over yet" caution. Not an indictment on what TRAI is going to do for voice apps & slow/fast lanes.

I would argue that the voip issue is not a neutrality one but a national security one. The reason for obtaining a license us not financial but law enforcement oversight.

I'm not justifying either way, but I don't think it has anything to do with neutrality in its economic sense

The proposal to regulate VoIP apps is before TRAI only because of lobbying by telcos who are still in denial over the world moving towards data and want to hold onto their voice call revenues.

I'm not sure what purpose licensing will serve from a law enforcement perspective. Banning VoIP apps that refuse to apply for a license will be like playing whack-a-mole as people can easily add a VPN to get around it or the service can intelligently route traffic to get around the ban.

On the other hand, unlicensed VoIP apps would not be allowed to advertise in India, whether that's on TV, billboards, newspapers, or popular Indian websites. They would likely not be allowed to be sold in the Indian locale of Google and Apple's app stores. A communications app that few have installed is close to useless - even in countries with significant freedom, we use Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Whatsapp and Snapchat over alternatives not directly controlled by major companies, because the free alternatives don't have the funds to convince all your friends that they're legitimate.

Whatsapp has never done any advertising in India and had more users in India than Facebook before it was bought by Facebook.

Indians don't have a very high trust barrier to overcome - NSA/privacy barely figures in the public discourse.

Definitely a step in the right direction, but there are plenty of ISPs who provide preferential treatment to Google by peering with their servers. YouTube HD videos stream without buffering on 512kbps connections.

https://www.quora.com/I-am-from-Mumbai-I-have-an-Internet-co...

Nothing stops anyone else from peering. There's no differential pricing involved here, just regular infrastructure.

While peering enables this, the real problem is that all these ISPs provide YouTube at a much higher speed than the rest of the web, which means that your bandwidth is not enough to stream videos without buffering for any other video site, while YouTube is always smooth.

Peering should just be a step towards enabling ISPs to fulfill their bandwidth promises, not a justification for fast lane/slow lane.

What's peering?

What does peering have to do with anything? 512kbs is 512kbs, no matter how far (within reason) you are from Google.

You can get around constant buffering with about 1Mbps and VP9 codec. You can't ever get HD streams with no buffering at 512. If you wait at start for it to move ahead, that is a different story. The reason why you still see the spinner even on 2-3 Megs connection is that although you ISP is saying that you will get 2-3 Mbps, the connection to YouTube streaming server you are fetching content from is notat that rate. You can use the "stats for nerds" option in the yt player to get aprox speed you are getting

I think in this case "having to get a license" means "you'll have to allow us to monitor the communications if you want the license".

So does this mean Wikipedia Zero will have to be shut down in India?

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