Sushant Sharma

Accedo

Business Development Manager

What is the big debate about?

The Internet is an integral part of our lives not just because it keeps businesses moving, it also has a huge impact on our personal lives. From e-mails, e-commerce to entertainment, virtually everything is just a few clicks away. The Internet has been one of the biggest disrupters in the modern history and has spawned a whole new generation of services that only existed in brick and mortar form until a few years ago. Netflix, YouTube, Facebook and Skype are some of these services and their popularity has also led to a steep rise in consumers’ demand for more bandwidth and faster speeds. Broadband providers, both Fixed ISPs and Mobile Operators, have invested mammoth amounts of money into interconnections and building last mile networks infrastructure to meet consumers’ bandwidth demands. This is the genesis of the Net Neutrality debate, precipitated by the amount of broadband Internet usage by these services.

Modern network monitoring technologies have allowed broadband providers the ability to identify every packet flowing through their networks. As a result, broadband providers have been accused of either degrading certain services or prioritizing those services that consumers are willing to pay for. Think of the latter scenario as the equivalent to paying more to be able to drive in the “fast lane” of a highway as opposed to getting snarled in the “slow lane” traffic. This behaviour shifts the balance in favour of bigger Internet players such as Netflix and Facebook and poses a significant barrier to start-ups and smaller companies competing with the industry giants. The common questions around Net Neutrality, therefore, are whether ISPs are mere “utilities”, like water or electricity, or are they justified to set different toll lanes on the Internet Superhighway?

State of this debate in Asia

The state of telecom networks, competitive environment, government regulations, market maturity and several other factors shape the nature of this debate in the region. In Asia, this issue has not drawn as much debate as it has in North America and Western Europe but there have been rumblings in different parts of Asia including South Korea when KT began blocking their Internet subscribers from using Internet services on their Samsung smart TVs. On the other hand, the rest of the market has quietly adopted the path of Net “Preferentiality”. Examples of partnerships between popular services, working with ISPs and Mobile Operators can be found aplenty across the region. Google, for example, struck a deal last year with Airtel, India’s largest mobile network operator, to offer Free Zone, providing up to one gigabit per month of free access to Gmail, Google+, and Google search. Facebook, instant messaging companies, music streaming services and several popular consumer Internet companies now rely on such partnerships and deals with broadband providers. Other example such as Mobile Operators offering “unlimited plans” for accessing Facebook and Whatsapp, are commonplace across Asia.

This has serious implications for the broadcast industry, especially as traditional broadcasters launch their own OTT services and as these services witness mass adoption. At the same time, smaller OTT players such as independent Video On Demand providers and content aggregators will face even more significant challenges. Don’t we want to see a next Netflix emerging out of Asia?

CASBAA 2020 Views

Sushant: The implications of Net Neutrality are far and wide, touching upon the issues of content filtering, Internet censorship, user privacy, etc. As more and more consumers go online to access content, be it offered by pure-play OTT or by broadcasters, this issue becomes more and more relevant and ripe for serious public debate. Whether as constituents of the broadcast ecosystem, or for the average consumers, creating awareness and catalysing appropriate regulations is necessary, lest we want Net “Preferentiality” to become the norm. Do we really want to pay through the nose to the toll collector every time we hit the highway to do any sort of online business?