India

Recommendations to TRAI on Transparent Broadband Services

My Recommendations to TRAI on the Draft Direction on delivering Broadband Services in a Transparent Manner

1. In my opinion, 512 kbps as bare minimum broadband speed by itself is regressive in nature and 64 kbps sought by Airtel means to take our nation’s IT Infrastructure Standards to Stone Age and I request a minimum mandated speed of 2 Mbps to be set as broadband speed which, though does not lets us compete with the developed nations but at least put us in par with the developing nations.

2. Please add clause (f) to the consultation paper mandating to qualitatively quantify the Quality of Service currently ignored by ISPs which results in low throughput, high latency, jitters and dropped packets – As a consumer who pays for a service, I expect a standard in the service rendered by the service provider and today there is no standardized measuring mechanism or process for reparation when the set standard is not met by the Service Provider.

3. Service Providers are to be transparent about the minimum committed speed on 2G/3G/4G Stacks. It is important to note the misuse of the term “up to” by ISPs, whereas there is no minimum QoS ever mentioned by the Service Providers. To give you an example, I have never seen the practical transfer speed of 500 kbps on EDGE let alone the theoretical possibility of 1 Mbps and it is the same case with both HSPA and HSPA+, not even 50% of the theoretical transfer speed of 14.4 and 16Mbps respectively has been experienced.

4. Complaints by users are generally treated as individual incidents and without much of importance given in resolving the issue. A cumulative report of customer complaints are to be published by the Service Providers month over month and the Plan of Action for mitigating and improvement of service to be shared as well – After all, this is a bare minimum expectation as they are answerable to the consumers who pay to avail the service. This should serve as a Key Performance Indicator for the ISP region wise and consumers can take informed decision basis the same.

FaceBook is executing a well crafted DDoS on the State

FaceBook is executing a well crafted DDoS on the State in an attempt to kill Net Neutrality and promote it’s agenda on Free Basics.

It is indeed such a measure that FaceBook has stooped low towards to ensure it’s interest on Free Basics is protected from any possible outcome that might be of the decision by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

TRAI for the second time came up with another Consultation Paper on Differential Pricing on Data Services and is seeking comments from the public to shape the future of Net Neutrality in India.

The first time, FaceBook came up with online commercials that were aimed at the sentiment that everyone should get internet.

The catch is, everyone gets internet, the internet FaceBook wants them to see and know and not the flat world in it’s truest existence.

This time around FaceBook resorted to Full Page Advertisements in Print Media, Bill Boards and that aside, resorted to misleading people in to submitting a drafted opinion supporting Free Basics from their own platform.

The trick here is, people don’t even know that they are supporting such a closed system but just by merely scrolling the page made them support FaceBook’s agenda.

Worst part is, people reporting that their dead relatives have supported FaceBook’s Free Basics, now beat that!

To top it, FaceBook runs full fledged advertising campaigns on it’s own platform to promote their Free Basics agenda, not just in India but outside India as well.

By this, FaceBook is misleading people and turning them in to a huge botnet against TRAI and the People of India.

Considering the pseudo monopoly status that FaceBook has and the mass psychology tactics it is deploying, the amount of ill informed submissions that have happened even without the user’s consent skews the data that TRAI is receiving. And this in my opinion is a well crafted DDoS attack executed by FaceBook on the State.

Now imagine, this skewed data is going to be taken for consideration during a decision making process on India’s Internet Freedom.

Here is a representation of how a DDoS looks like https://twitter.com/r0h1n/status/679218939130421249 – Thanks to @r0h1n

You can submit a drafted response or edit the draft before sending to TRAI from Save The Internet – This is your bit in protecting Internet Freedom in India.