Allot Communications and Openet: Enemies of network neutrality

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sushubh
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies Replies 19
  • Views Views 9,788
Earlier Fair Usage policies were also seen as a boon for customers which promised that consumers will see a rise in their speeds alongside hardly any effect on their usage(98% of them). But what are we seeing today? I have talked to so many broadband users & i will say the things are opposite, 90-95 % of them feel that the Fair Usage levels are too low or they are from the days of 2004 when 256-512 kbps were like 50-100 Mbps today.


I quite agree - FUPs are far too low. FUPs in India are too fair to the companies, but not fair to the consumers.

Not only that I don't even see any single Isp who is implementing Fair Usage Policy and giving fair limits. One or two are not implementing it totally, while the remaining have choked the internet. I can't undersatnd how some companies earlier offered 100-200Gb limits but now only 40-50 Gb, has the overall prices of bandwidth increased- no. Then why? Answer is they just want more out of same capacity & make the customer suffer.


Prices of bandwidth have fallen somewhat, to be honest, but I think what they are trying to do is balance out profitable customers from unprofitable ones - obviously infrastructure in some areas is extremely expensive, whilst in others is quite cheap. But even though in the past there have been different tariffs based on the circle you're located in, they're sort of... trying to "normalize" the tariffs across the country.

But yes, the FUP situation in India isn't really working out well for consumers at all and I think that all things considered, ESPECIALLY companies like Airtel (who are owning the international capacity already) could offer so much more for the same amount of money.

Pay per site is a concept which too will be used to maximise profit rather than reducing consumer expenditure.

Again, I don't agree necessarily with the concept but I do think there is a percentage of the market who have a limited number of sites to which they visit on a regular basis, and as such this may work out more economical for them.

For users like you and I, such schemes won't work, and therefore as long as this kind of tiered tariff structure doesn't become the norm and so long as it's not forced upon users (as in, we don't have a choice of a "you can see the whole internet" type plan), then I have no real problems with an operator choosing to offer it - and if I'm on a plan where I can only access facebook for example, then perhaps the access to facebook should be unlimited.

If I'm going to be paying for data (as most people are in most of the world), then I want my MBs/GBs to be valid anywhere on the internet and not just at a few particular websites.
 
FUps & Pay per site are fair concept for many peoples, but today every customers hate them becoz they are forced upon all, rather than being made available as an option. Most of them force these by either taking their all old plans back some by revising their existing plan. If heavy downloading plan like those earlier used to exist & new FUP carrying plans both are available with an ISP then it will certainly help them maintain a fair ratio of both type of user i.e. those who use less, they will opt for FUP plans & those who download heavily will keep their old plans.Decreasing the Data usage is resulting only in the reduction of users/subscribers & loss of reputation in cases of most ISPs. Also they are reducing the growth oppportunity of the online marketing,ad agencies & media content providing companies by restricting the usage. In a way they are restricting the innovation opportunities also which might come tommrow if people had decent usage with them.
 
FUps & Pay per site are fair concept for many peoples, but today every customers hate them becoz they are forced upon all, rather than being made available as an option. Most of them force these by either taking their all old plans back some by revising their existing plan.


Rightfully so, in some respects. I have a disclaimer on my product brochures that say that the prices may be revised at any time and without notice - this works to the consumers advantage if the price remains static but amount of data (or speed of the flat-rate plan) goes up, but to their disadvantage if things like FUPs are introduced.

The problem consumers have at the moment is that each company offers such slight differences, it's often very difficult to tell which plan is better value. I think if something like LLU were introduced, providers would be forced to compete properly because they would all be using the same infrastructure to deliver services and thus would be on more equal ground.

If heavy downloading plan like those earlier used to exist & new FUP carrying plans both are available with an ISP then it will certainly help them maintain a fair ratio of both type of user i.e. those who use less, they will opt for FUP plans & those who download heavily will keep their old plans.

Thats unfortunately not how it works in the real world. Simply put, many people don't even know what FUP is or how it affects their usage. Most people who don't opt specifically for a data plan opt for whatever they can get based usually on price or value for money. More often than not, it's the purse-string holders who make the actual purchasing decisions, not the people consuming the actual product (parents buy, kids use... that type of thing).

Because of this, given the choice of 2 different 2mbit/s plans: 1 cheaper with FUP, 1 more expensive without FUP, almost always the cheaper one will win because a) it's cheaper and b) it still doesn't have the possibility of bill shock or anything like that, and realistically, without FUP, even a large ISP probably has to charge at least 2k for a 1mbit/s plan to not incur losses, which is about Rs500 more than most of the Indian market are willing to pay for such a service - let alone anything faster than that!

I've often said that ISPs have priced themselves in to a corner, whereby users expect unlimited plans for 750-1000, which makes it very difficult for ISPs to increase the speeds of those unlimited plans without some rather hefty financial implications.

Decreasing the Data usage is resulting only in the reduction of users/subscribers & loss of reputation in cases of most ISPs. Also they are reducing the growth oppportunity of the online marketing,ad agencies & media content providing companies by restricting the usage. In a way they are restricting the innovation opportunities also which might come tommrow if people had decent usage with them.

I don't disagree with you in principle, but despite companies such as Airtel treating customers in this manner, Airtel have still increased the number of subscribers YOY by something like 19% (which equates to between 1.5 and 2 lakh customers I think).
 
Yep i agree with you MG what you u r saying is correct. I feel the real problem is the healthy competetion which does not exist. One BSNl has the deepest reach with its wire going to very huge part of the country but most people don't go for it becoz of the kind of service they offer. Thats why people even today go for Airtel becoz they can expect some services rather than no service.LLU is the first thing that should be introduced as it can change the overall scenario of broadband market. As the competetion will increase & the biggie ISPs will need to offer better packages to retain their existing customers & get potential customers. Until that doesn't happen most of the biggie's will continue to offer similar packages & there will be no threat to their individual subscribers base, as no one will be having any incentive to change his ISP.
 
You are aware that this is the same concept that we were going on about when Tata introduced it's tiered pricing for Social Networking, Email etc earlier this year, right?

https://broadband.forum/net-neutrality/61438-tata-docomo-ends-net-neutrality/

Besides, it's not all bad: if I only want to use things like Facebook etc then if my carrier offers me a cheaper price to access only sites such as Facebook, why wouldn't I take it? This sort of tiered pricing has its market, so long as this type of pricing does not become the standard and/or mandatory for everyone.

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM ----------

I should probably also point out that I don't necessarily agree with the concept - just trying to look at it from both sides of the argument.

i would be impressed if they offer something like free streaming on youtube. heh. facebook is nothing in comparison when it comes to bandwidth consumption. :)
 
i would be impressed if they offer something like free streaming on youtube. heh. facebook is nothing in comparison when it comes to bandwidth consumption. :)

If I'm to understand the situation correctly, this is merely a platform for being able to offer such tiered services - it would be entirely up to the ISP as to which services they charge for and/or the bundles any given service is included in - like the DoCoMo plans are now.
 
yupp yupp...

frankly. i had rather have network neutrality than have few sites offered for free on my service. :P

---------- Post added at 05:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:58 AM ----------

things are not looking good right now in america.

FCC breaks Obama's promise on Net Neutrality: 3 things you need to know | Progressive Change Campaign Committee

I guess it depends on how you use your service - you and I and most people on this forum, yeah, sure... but the masses? I would suggest that the 80/20 rule would apply here in that 80% of people visit 20% of the websites, and the rest of us use the internet properly.
 
Back