This blog post is a result of wonderful discussion on #NetNeutrality that I had with my fellow ISB Co2014 peers on whatsapp. 

The Argument

Raj made some fair points against #NetNeutrality (which I previously thought wasn’t possible). The essential premise was that the current data charges are so high that 60 crore Indians are not able to access it. Now if Flipkart or Whatsapp wants to pay for their data usage to reach out to these customers, why are we (more privileged  masses) crying foul. We are getting a free lunch along with them and should not create much noise about it. Also, telecom industry has spent a lot on the auctions and now needs to find some innovative ways to make back that money. The question was that does Net Neutrality apply the same way to India as it does to US?

The Response 

The Net Neutrality team had their share of reasons which I guess anyone reading this blog would already be well aware of. The regular ones like – It’ll  stifle innovation, Giving too much power to Airtel to decide my choices (what would Deepika Padukone do with #MaChoice then?) etc etc.

The debate went long and neither sides giving up. Kudos to Raj for fighting for so long for what seemed like a lost cause at the beginning. But we came up with quite a novel solution actually and Airtel – I believe you might be interested in this.

The Solution

If the premise is to charge the businesses for the data costs, then rather than making a closed group like AirtelZero, you should make an open platform where all businesses can choose if they want to subsidize the consumers for accessing their website/app. Provide APIs to the businesses to track usage based on how many people are using it and charge the business accordingly, the same way you charge the consumer today. I think the revenue potential in this can be much higher than limiting the AirtelZero group.  

I think everyone’s a winner in this. Airtel is not a gate-keeper on who can reach me and who cannot. Consumer saves money on the data charges. and Businesses can reach out to much larger audience, if they want to. Airtel makes a little more money, same data charges as today, plus may be a nominal 5-10k initial sign up cost for businesses. This is similar to adding cloud components to Telecom. Instead of paying Amazon for storage, I am paying Airtel to use it as a channel – Telecom as a Channel (TaaC model). I believe we have coined a new term here :D, at least in a way that we are defining it. Major accomplishment for a whatsapp chat, ain’t it :).

Everyone’s a winner

I believe #NetNeutrality holds the same virtues for India as it does for US, may be more as well. And there is still room for some innovative models for business and telecom to reach out to the lower income groups without stifling everyone’s freedom of choice.