We submitted our counter comments to the TRAI yesterday, on the issue of Network Slicing, which appeared as being buried by the regulator in an innocuous Quality of Service consultation.
Download: Our submission here. The zip file contains both the PDF, and a .md file you can give you AI to query our submission
Network slicing is a feature of 5G networks, wherein a single network can be sliced into multiple virtual slices, and each slice an operate differentially from the other: it can, like Airtel has done, be sliced by type of customer, such that a better quality of service is provided to postpaid customers, or it can be sliced by application/service/content wherein better speeds, lower latency, congestion priority can be provided for accessing a specific service.
Reliance Jio and the telecom industry body GSMA, in their consultation submission, made arguments that when seen together suggest that Network Slicing is already unrestricted under telecom regulations, and that application/service/content specific network slices are already permitted or should be permitted.
In our submission to TRAI we’ve made the following points, which, I’ll be honest, are the exact same arguments I’ve made in favour for Net Neutrality over the last 13-14 years. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Here are key excerpts from the submission:
- The neutrality expected of the networks also apply to slices of the network
India’s rules around differential pricing and network neutrality are applicable to the technology of network slicing as well: slices cannot be used to discriminate between applications/services/content on the basis of speed, latency, reliability, packet loss, congestion priority and price.
As a country, we cannot allow telecom operators to manipulate what consumers consume on the Internet by instituting anti-neutrality practices, just as network slicing based on speed, latency, reliability, packet loss, congestion priority and price.
Telecom operators don’t own the spectrum: it is licensed to them in public interest, and regulations exist to ensure non-discriminatory behaviour.
There is no set of principles as core to the functioning of the Internet as those of Net Neutrality, and the freedom that users have to view and consume content and services, without the service provider influencing or interfering with their choice.
- How the network is sliced can be an issue
Network slicing is by itself is not violative of Net Neutrality, but how the network is sliced can be an issue: it can be neutral and enable access to all services equally in a slice, or it can violate net neutrality by offering application specific slicing and service-level slicing in different slices, and additionally, price different slices differentially.
3. What cannot be done directly, cannot also be done indirectly
Thus any provision for specialised services shouldn’t be allowed to be used to circumvent regulations related to prioritization or zero rating. Internet Access Providers must also be prevented from charging services any additional money for preferential treatment, to ensure that an incentive structure isn’t created for more services opting to become “specialised services”.
In its February 2016 prohibition of discriminatory tariffs for data services regulations, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ruled that: “Further, applying the principle that what cannot be done directly, cannot also be done indirectly, TSPs are also prohibited from entering into arrangements that have the same effect as charging discriminatory tariffs on the basis of content.”
We believe the same principle of “what cannot be done directly, cannot also be done indirectly” must also apply in case of specialised services.
4. Net Neutrality is essentially about three principles
- All sites and apps must be equally accessible: ISPs and telecom operators should not block certain apps and sites, just because they don’t pay them a revenue share. No gateways to the Internet should be allowed, and no preferential listing of certain sites, whether via commercial arrangements or not.
- All sites must be accessible at the same speed (at an ISP level): This means no speeding up of certain sites because of business deals. More importantly, it means no slowing down some sites.
- The cost of access must be the same for all sites (per Kb/Mb or as per data plan): This means no “Zero Rating”, or differential rating for different sites, apps or services. In countries like India, Net Neutrality is more about cost of Internet access than speed of Internet access, because we don’t have fast and slow lanes: all lanes are slow.
5. Telecom operators should not shape consumer choice by treating different services differentially:
The Internet is not ten, hundred, ten thousand or even a million websites. It comprises hundreds of millions of sites and applications, which are available to all Internet users to choose from. This has been made possible because the access service provider does not influence consumer choice by either modifying the speed of Internet access, availability of sites and services and price of accessing a particular website or service.
We would urge you to ensure that the petty self-interest of oligopolistic telecom operators and large Internet companies does not hold innovation, freedom of expression, access to information and knowledge to ransom.
A structure needs to be put into place to ensure that providers of Internet access (telecom operators and ISPs) are not in a position to influence which site or service on the Internet consumers prefer to access: that choice must be of the consumer’s alone.
For innovation to take place, platforms have to be affordable, stable and neutral.
6. There’s precedence of telecom operators manipulating access quality by service
On the Internet, every millisecond matters. Websites in the past have shown an increase in performance after shaving milliseconds off their loading time. Traffic management may be misused as follows:
- Network service providers could make some websites faster than others in exchange for money or via partnership. For example: Following a partnership with Google, for the Indian Premier League in 2010, Airtel had provided a fast lane to users accessing YouTube, increasing their speed to 2 Mbps.
- Network service providers could make some websites slower than others. For example, in 2014, users found that the video service Ogle was slow even on an 8mbps Airtel connection. It was alleged that Airtel was throttling Ogle.
- Network service providers could make their own services faster than others. For example: prior to Net Neutrality regulations, in 2015, games downloaded from Airtel’s “Games on Demand” service were available at a speed higher than that of other service providers, with download speeds for users not on a 2mbps plan upgraded while downloading games from the Airtel service, no matter which plan they have signed up for.
7. If allowed, this is how telecom operators may slice services:
Video streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix and JioStar may be bundled into a separate video slice with higher quality of service on-demand. This will mean that in order to be able to stream a service, these services may have to pay a telecom operator for that slice since the standard slice might have poor quality of service.
Alternatively, customers might be charged separately for better quality of service for streaming. This creates an incentive for the telecom operator to degrade the quality of service for video. It also gives JioStar a competitive advantage because of vertical integration with Reliance Jio. There’s a clear conflict of interest for Reliance Jio here. GSMA is anyway a representative body of telecom operators.
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Telecom operators may create a separate slice for internet telephony, and prioritise certain applications that sign up for this. There is precedence in the past, with Airtel creating a separate pack for VoIP in December 2014, charging customers separately to use VoIP.
If you enable service or application specific slicing, companies like Airtel will be able to degrade or make more expensive VoIP services that are outside of these packs, or maybe offer a degraded quality of service to others.
8. Telecom operators could use network slicing to prioritise their own services
It is easy for telecom operators to launch products that compete with existing online products, and degrade the experience of all other services. Therefore, it is essential, in order to maintain fair competition and diversity of availability of both content and services
Zero rating own services: Bharti Airtel, when it launched its online music streaming service Wynk, waived data charges for Airtel users, using its ownership of content and carriage. This effectively puts competitors like Saavn, Gaana and Rdio at a competitive disadvantage, with no means to competing.
Speeding up own services: Games downloaded from Airtel’s “Games on Demand” service are available at a speed higher than that of other service providers, with download speeds for users not on a 2mbps plan upgraded while downloading games from the Airtel service, no matter which plan they have signed up for.
Blocking competing services: Vodafone and Airtel had blocked Netcore’s MyToday Mobile VAS service, since MyToday’s content over SMS competed with telecom operators vertically integrated service. There is every scope of Reliance Jio and other telecom operators prioritising their own services over others.
It is easy for telecom operators to launch products that compete with existing online products, and degrade the experience of all other services. Therefore, it is essential, in order to maintain fair competition and diversity of availability of both content and services that telecom operators are restricted from adopting anti-competitive and predatory practices.
9. India rejected the idea that telecom operators should be allowed to play gatekeeper
At the core of this debate is the issue of how we let one business regulate the consumers’ ability to access another, given that spectrum is not unlimited.
Should better technology, and indeed, the usage of national resources like spectrum, and the future of thousands of Internet companies be forsaken to protect the interests of an oligopoly of 2 telecom operators?
In enforcing Net Neutrality in 2016 via the differential pricing order, the Net Neutrality order in 2017/18 and enshrining Net Neutrality in the license conditions, India rejected the idea that telecom operators should be allowed to play gatekeeper.
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India has one of the largest populations of Internet users in the world, most of whom have come online in a relatively short period of time. At the heart of the Digital India initiative is the goal of providing Internet connectivity to all Indian citizens. It is important that while trying to make the Internet available to every Indian citizen, we are also conscious of what kind of an Internet is being made available to them.
We should not compromise the basic principles of the Internet based on lobbying large telecom operators like Reliance Jio and GSMA: the Internet that we get as Indians get should be open, neutral and non-discriminatory, for it to enable collaboration, innovation and progress. The Internet Freedom of our citizens and startups was not sold to telecom operators with the spectrum auctions.
We would urge you to protect Net Neutrality, and not allow telecom operators to manipulate how consumers consume content on the Internet by instituting anti-neutrality practices. There must be no manipulation of speed, availability or cost of Internet access based on the site, app or service used.
10. The Internet Freedom of our citizens and startups was not sold to telecom operators with the spectrum auctions
India has one of the largest populations of Internet users in the world, most of whom have come online in a relatively short period of time. At the heart of the Digital India initiative is the goal of providing Internet connectivity to all Indian citizens. It is important that while trying to make the Internet available to every Indian citizen, we are also conscious of what kind of an Internet is being made available to them.
We should not compromise the basic principles of the Internet based on lobbying large telecom operators like Reliance Jio and GSMA: the Internet that we get as Indians get should be open, neutral and non-discriminatory, for it to enable collaboration, innovation and progress. The Internet Freedom of our citizens and startups was not sold to telecom operators with the spectrum auctions.
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The Internet is a space without precedence, in that it is uniquely non-discriminatory.
A non-discriminatory Internet decentralizes the sources of innovation because everyone can create Internet services and applications without having to obtain permission from telecom companies. It allows collaborators to create open source and free tools to provide an alternative to proprietary tools, and improve on them.
Today, a text messaging platform, Whatsapp, can incorporate voice calling over Internet protocol without needing permission. Line has incorporated messaging, calling and games into a single application. WeChat has done this and added e-commerce. There are games that integrate messaging and Internet Telephony, allowing gamers to interact with each other while playing.
Everything is a remix on the Internet. All businesses are about bundling and unbundling, and there is no ecosystem in existence that is as agile, innovative, free and competitive as the Internet.
11. Startups need low friction, predictable systems
India’s startup ecosystem is highly competitive and increasingly global. Startups need low friction, predictable systems where startups can operate without having to negotiate agreements with telecom operators for connectivity or speed.
If you allow service/application/content specific slicing, you will facilitate the creation of impediments which will force Internet businesses from India to seek to operate in markets that offer more freedom than ours.
In a global economy where countries compete to attract the best businesses, talent and investment, you will leave India worse off if you don’t protect Net Neutrality, and prevent service/application specific Network Slicing.
The lack of revenue-sharing agreements with telecommunications operators, such as network usage fees, facilitates a more level playing field. Startups, including those in their initial stages, can develop their businesses without concern that internet service providers will favor competitors with more substantial financial resources.
12. It enables telecom operators to become kingmakers, and enable concentration of power with telecom operators and large Internet companies:
Concentration of power with large companies: Large companies like Google and Facebook, both of which have previously inked anti-net neutrality agreements with telecom operators will benefit at the cost of upstart competitors.
Remember that an Indian company, Zoho competes with Google Docs. Imagine if it cost more to access Zoho than Google Docs, because of a collusive agreement between Google and Airtel.
In AI, OpenAI and Anthropic may partner with Reliance Jio, but an Indian company like Sarvam may not. It would hurt Sarvam if its AI responds more slowly than ChatGPT and Anthropic, or Jio’s own AI service.
As a reminder: telecom operators are not neutral by nature. In 2008, Airtel and Vodafone had blocked Netcore’s MyToday services for no apparent reason.
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Telecom operators are meant to be pipes: mere access service providers neutral to the content that the user is accessing. This converts them into MSO’s, and allows them to choose which service or package of services gets accessed, at what speed and at price.
Concentration of power with telecom operators: It enables telecom operators to become kingmakers. We’ve seen this play out in Mobile VAS, where telecom operators would gatekeep access to services for customers, and take a revenue share.
13. The TRAI should examine its own role and not allow telecom operators to become the Land Mafia of the Internet
Zoom out and examine your role in the context of the future for this country, which holds the potential for the creation of thousands of Zomatos, Flipkarts, Zeptos, Shiprockets, Paytms, and whether changing the rules of Internet access hampers or spurs innovation.
Steps must be taken to ensure that telecom operators don’t operate like the Land Mafia of the technology space. A government policy that actively permits predatory behavior is either indicative of a scam, or the recipe for many.