Net Neutrality vs Personal Dilemma

By now, most have heard the story of India’s telecom authority TRAI blocking “Free Basics” in India. Free Basics was an offering from Facebook to provide free internet connectivity to millions of people in India, while keeping access restricted to certain properties (many offered by Facebook itself).

I got caught up on the news, only after a tweetstorm by Marc Andreessen that included a few tweets that many (including me) found offensive. He later deleted the tweet and apologized. Mark Zuckerberg also distanced himself from those tweets.

The TRAI ruling primarily objected to the differential pricing practice, where a lower price service (i.e. free service) provided a restricted internet, compared to expensive, all-inclusive internet. As I was reading various tweets and opinions, I was nodding in agreement with most net neutrality advocates. While debating it with myself, I realized how similar this situation might have been to my own about 20 years ago and how it would have impacted me.

Back in 1994–95, when VSNL started offering public internet for the first time in India, I was in the first year of college. VSNL was a state agency and the only ISP at that time. It offered two internet access plans. On one side, there was shell access which was slightly affordable, and on the other — the “real” internet, strangely called TCP/IP access, which was 4–5x more expensive. The shell access meant using text-only browsers like Lynx for accessing websites and other text-only mail clients (Pine, IIRC). You couldn’t use real browsers like Mosaic/Netscape, or a POP email client, or IRC, or what most of the internet had to offer. I was already dialing long-distance to Mumbai to get any internet access and could not afford to pay for the “TCP/IP access”. So, I signed up for shell access, even though it was inferior in content. This single event changed my life profoundly, as I was exposed to vast amount of information that had been previously inaccessible to me. After realizing how transformative this was, I upgraded to the TCP/IP level for an even more mind-blowing experience.

Was VSNL offering differential pricing, as many real internet services barely worked in the shell? But, for someone like me, it was still extremely valuable to have some access than nothing at all. How would I have felt, if someone had denied me the “inferior” internet, because I could not afford the “superior”, unrestricted internet? I would have been pissed. Today, about 800 million Indians have no internet connectivity. Would I have been just a tiny speck in that large number? Today, as I enjoy my unlimited LTE connectivity in the US, should I really comment on how unacceptable “Free Basics” is for people with no access at all?

Hopefully, TRAI has made the decision by taking all objective arguments into account. If most people are rejoicing the decision in India, then, perhaps, that is the best outcome, at the present time. Hope there is more to be accomplished than just banning Free Basics and not offering any other alternative to connect more people. Time will tell.

I appreciate what the net neutrality advocates are fighting for. It is important to have unrestricted and affordable internet access available to as many people as possible.

There lies my personal dilemma — should I have a double standard about how this could have impacted me personally, vs. how it impacts the millions today?