[Hamara-devel] Please comment on Net Neutrality on mygov.in till 20th of August.

[shirish]

Dear all,

Warning - this would be a longish one.

Please comment on Net Neutrality on mygov.in till 20th of August. As of 
now around 50k people have already filed their position on the same.

For the geeky-inclined there is a report which was released yesterday 
evening

https://mygov.in/sites/default/files/master_image/Net_Neutrality_Committee_report.pdf

I read a bit yesterday and reading the rest today, the consultative 
report is a clever way in which the government along with big businesses 
want to tax OTT and in turn our web charges go up.

Just to share as an excerpt, right at the start, on page 15 the report 
states :-

2.6	 Also relevant to the issue is the nature of network development 
brought about by investment in infrastructure. Networks that rely more 
on optical fiber (fixed) than spectrum (mobile) are less impervious to 
network demands by user. Spectrum resource being inherently limited 
brings technological limitations on QoS for Internet delivery over 
mobile unlike optical fiber which has the capacity to expand to 
accommodate increased demands on its bandwidth resources. Communications 
in India has developed relying on mobile as the preferred medium so much 
so that currently 98% of all subscribers are wireless customers unlike 
most other countries in the world.

- Net Neutrality Committee Report.

This is the way the government wants to escape. Forget fiber, even a 
standard CAT 5/6 cable is good enough to do video-conferencing. If the 
government wanted to, it could have asked/stated that each town should 
be networked in a MAN (Metro Area Network) and that would have fulfilled 
lot of issues. There have been no long-term studies that I know 
(although would try to find out if there were) about people's browsing 
habits in India, but more than not, most of the queries, problems and 
information that people look for is local. It doesn't make sense for me 
to go all round the globe to look for the information which is just at 
the other side of the city. If we had that, cost of hostings would have 
gone dramatically and we would have lot more home-grown content on the 
web. It is a known fact, that more cheaper the infrastructure, more and 
more things move there.

Another thing that I noted that it was full of mis-spellings and what 
not. It should have gone through a spell-check at least once.

It is the government and certain lobbies which made the government look 
in one way and do what it did. The government of the day was in 
opposition at the time and even they didn't raise a single voice when 
the telecom roadmap and policy was being put down on the paper.

Even now with the whole 'Digital India' I haven't seen a movement 
towards MAN even today. And the concept of MAN has had a long history.
See for instance 
www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2013/802-rev-D1-7CMP.pdf . I remember 
StarHub (part of the Star Network and when it more Asian than today's 
global), they had done the same in Malaysia and Singapore in early 90's. 
At that point in time, they were more or less on equal footing to India 
than where they are today.

Such gems are spread throughout the paper. If you value your freedom and 
for some people, more importantly if you value your pocket, please go 
and share your views on mygov.in

Some media takeaways for the same :-

  W0w_YhZUYeA - that is the youtube hash. At the very end of each video 
there is a unique string/hash which identifies the video, it's called 
content id and part of it also tells where it is on the network. 
Anyways, see the new AIB video.

Also see 
http://www.livemint.com/Industry/9V650Z6OhMb8hiRKEGqScN/Govt-extends-deadline-for-comments-on-net-neutrality-to-20-A.html

and 
http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/india-extends-deadline-for-comments-on-net-neutrality-to-august-20/48493806

Hope to see some people putting across their views at mygov.in. If you 
feel like you could share what you put up on the thread herein or you 
can link to the comment therein, upto you.

I was in a hurry as today had lot of commitments (even though it was the 
Independence day) and my gov.in gave me lot of shit, still managed to 
use the same things that AIB gave.

If I knew I would have enough time like now what has been extended, 
would have written in a bit more detail.

Anyways, hope you all got the idea, go and do it for yourself.
-- 
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal,
Community Lead,
Hamaralinux.org