Mostly any business investment has a planned ROI, What course correction is possible in the case of conflict between Net Neutrality concept and ISP business model to minimize the ROI Impact? Skype, hangout or any other VoIP application may have been impacting ISPs investment strategy, ISP’s subscribers prefer data route for video chat and long distance call than traditional voice route while impacting ISP business model.
In the US, Comcast service (ISP) slowed down video content from Netflix abusing monopoly as an ISP while resorting Netflix to buy bandwidth that subsequently jacked up the internet price that passed down to the customers. The president, Mr. Obama very asked ISP players to appreciate Net Neutrality requesting FCC to regulate internet service like utility service, meaning no skewed up cost or content “type” driven cost equation, any bits flowing in the telecommunication system should be treated equally as gas, telephone or any utility prices etc.
Is hiking 16 times tariff is fair as reported by few leading ISP vendors in India? Wouldn’t this trigger a mad rush by other ISPs? Wouldn’t this be a catastrophe to the intent of Internet as a platform for innovation & inventions?
On the contrary, ISPs make up internet as part of their business plan (AT&T, Comcast, Airtel etc.. are all in the same group).Hence, shouldn’t such OTT (Over the top) data such as Skype, Viber etc. be categorized and priced differently else investors might shy away from further investment in spectrum and subsequent networked applications development?
Now, what we as subscribers, govt. as regulators and ISPs as providers should help each other so that both Net Neutrality and Internet are embraced and encouraged further? This is much more pronounced in the midst of growing IoT(Internet of things), Social & networking, Analytics, BigData , Cloud infrastructure , migration from IPv4 to IPv6 and last but not the least Mobile computing and its expanding application usages.
Regulatory bodies FCC, TRAI etc. in the world should devise a model that strike a balance amongst users, service providers, business players. I feel the model should be able to let market drive the price.