About Network Neutrality And Walled Gardens
The network neutrality debate is an exceedingly complex one. At its heart, network neutrality aims to ensure that all services are treated neutrally on a network, which is a noble-enough aim, but one that is not realistic if you know how the internet functions in the real world.
Behind the scenes, on any network, connecting from point A to point B is never as simple as finding the shortest route between the two. Depending on a number of factors, even machines on the same network may or may not take an entire roundtrip around the globe to get talking to each other.
This, by itself, renders half of the network neutrality argument pointless: the network has never been neutral, nor will it ever be due to a variety of factors.
Where network neutrality does have a role to play is in terms of exclusion than differently priced service levels.
If an open network (like a DSL connection) can ensure that all services are available on it on a best-effort basis on it at a baseline level, it can be deemed neutral.
There should not be a problem if the ISP should choose to negotiate peering with a content company that allows it faster delivery/access from point A to point B.
The crucial difference is that the companies are allowed the freedom to negotiate a premium service level between themselves, while allowing the baseline to continue as it is for everyone.
If the ISP were to degrade baseline services based on a lack of payment between the ISP and a service provider, that would mean that network is no longer neutral to all players.
This post was largely prompted by the recent bits of news about Airtel's promotion of YouTube's IPL stream to a 2mbit link and the walled garden internet access on the MTN mobile network.
Walled gardens don't really get into the entire network neutrally debate as long as they are not promoted as an open network. If you do advertise connectivity only to a certain bunch of products, it is fine by me.
You get what you pay for. As it has been the case with Airtel Live so far. What I would have a problem with is if they advertise an open network and deny access to other sites.
Read MoreYear In Review: Mobility
2009 was the first time in so many years that I desperately wanted to change my mobile service provider. It started with the problems I was having with Airtel once my phone connection was changed from corporate billing to personal billing. This number has been with me, in my name, for close to 8-years now and it was a bit crazy to know that every time the billing changes, they register you into a new customer ID, forcing you to start fresh from credit limits and whatnot. This just fails on so many levels on rewarding customer loyalty. Thankfully, for them, the other providers are no better.
There were not many other changes on that front. I have stuck steadfastly to Nokia E71 as the platform. The phone is getting a bit long in the tooth now and as the joke goes, even the milkman has one of these nowadays, but it is built like a tank, works reasonably well and I have gone through only a single intentional factory reset to fix the regulation Nokia sluggishness. At its current price levels the phone is a great value-for-money proposition, only if we could slap something like a decent operating system on it, than the mindlessness called S60.
Usage of the phone is limited largely to voice (~70% for local outgoing calls in billing), lower single digit percentages in text and data is covered by the Rs 99 plan which has a bundled 250 MB per month free usage limit with it. I do intend to change my call plan, which should see a marginal drop in total billing. Data will remain the same since I've not felt the need for the Rs 500 unlimited plan and I've never run afoul of the 250 MB download limit.
One significant switch that has happened through the year is my switch away from the paid applications in the GPS segment. I've tried all three paid products — Nokia Maps, MapmyIndia and Satnav — and found all to be weak in different ways. The Nokia license is really expensive even if the UI is the best of the lot, MapmyIndia search is useless (which is a crucial part of a GPS app, especially when it can hook up to a server to do the same) and Satnav, while cheap, suffers from both problems. Besides, it does not work on my E17 with a QWERTY keypad. The winner this time around is Google Maps and it is a pity, because I will more than happily pay for the licenses and I don't want Google running every part of my life, but it is an opportunity lost for the others. For my normal travel, I got myself a Mapmyindia Lx device.
The apps that have remained on my deck:
Opera Mini 4/5. (sustained heavy usage, for mail mostly. I don't use push email)
Google Maps (sustained heavy usage, mostly within the city)
Nokia Sports Tracker (Tracking my walks/run)
Gravity (Tweeting, usage trending downwards now)
Putty (Rarely used, one of those things you have with you for the 'just-in-case' scenarios)
Read MoreYear In Review: Connectivity
This is part of a series of posts on some of the products I have used and come to love/hate through the year.
About five months ago, I switched to Tata Indicom Wimax. Having previously used their data card, I was very apprehensive about signing up for it. But, having moved to working from a home office, reliable connectivity was a major requirement for me, which, my provider at that time, MTNL, was not. They had fiber cuts due to employees being on strike, horrific network latency and many other problems. At one point we had no connectivity for about three days and that is where I decided to draw the line.
I had heard good things about Tata Indicom Wimax from Surinder who had been using the service for a while by then. I would have gladly gone with Airtel, but they don't service the block that I live in, which is astonishing because this is bang in the middle of South Delhi and for some strange reason they have not bothered to cover this particular block. And it is not like there is no demand for broadband here. I know of three other customers for the Wimax service in the same block and there are many more on the crappy local cable internet service.
Surprisingly, Indicom's customer service is pretty decent. My request was processed quite quickly and even though the local franchisee made a hash of it later (usual problems with Indian Slow Time), that too was resolved quickly. The only requirement for Wimax to work is to have a good line of sight to a nearby tower of the company. So, it is essential that you have permissions to install the antenna on the terrace of your house and to run the cable down into your residence from there.
In crowded areas getting the signal right can take a bit of time, but once that is done you just have to sign up with their customer portal and you are good to go. All the basic plans come with a private IP that can be easily converted to a public IP by paying Rs 200 more. I chose the Infinity 384 plan, which is one of those somewhat-unlimited plans. There is no dialer software required for the service, but it does require you to renew your session at the customer portal every 7-hours or so. It should not be too hard to write a script to get around this, but I've not felt the need for it.
The Positives
1. Stable and reliable: I've not had a single instance of downtime with the service in about five months now. The speeds are consistently good and I easily get 40 KBps average on downloads easily.
2. Reasonable FUP. The combined (up/down) traffic limit for a month on my plan is 70 GB. Even with heavy downloads, my usage maxes out at 30 GB, leaving me with plenty of room to spare.
3. Online Payments: I can pay the bills online. Which is very important for a lazy ass like me.
4. The customer portal: Apparently it has been redone ever since I joined up. But it gives very good usage statistics and breakdowns.
The Negatives
1. The session logouts after the 7-hour limit. It is irritating initially and probably flouts the 'always-on' requirement for broadband, but I have made my peace with it for the stability I've had with the service.
2. The unit can take a while (~10 minutes) to get back on to the network after a power disruption. It is a good idea to buy a low capacity UPS just for this.
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