Supposing you buy a pipe. It is a metal pipe. It has been claimed by the manufacturer that the pipe can carry water, gas, any liquid including molten silver or gold or can carry any chemical.
Now you are using the pipe for carrying water. Water is a cheap product, in some parts of the country it is free and in some cities like Bombay, it costs 10 Rupees per 1000 liters.
Then you decide that you are now going to use the pipe to carry gas, LPG in particular.
LPG is around 100 Rs/Kg.
Can the manufacturer then ask you for a different price for the pipe? Can he say that now because it is carrying gas, which is 100 Rs/Kg and not water, you will have to pay me a higher price?
Logically, it would not make any sense for such a demand.
Same is the case with Internet Bandwidth.
An Internet Service Provider can not demand higher price for different type of data that is being carried through its network infrastructure.
All the information that flows through the Internet wires, which are also incidentally known as data pipes, is carried using TCP/IP protocol.
The data is broken into packets and then sent by the server. At the receiving end, the protocol is able to assemble these data packets into the same sequence as they were sent.
Now this data can be a movie stream or a drama or a song or a television show or a PowerPoint Presentation with embedded audio or video.
Eventually, all data that flows through the Internet pipes is measured in MBps (Megabit Per Second). It does not make any difference to the Internet Pipe as to what data is flowing through the pipe. In fact, it would take sophisticated technology and snooping to find out what kind of data is flowing through the pipes.
Yet, those companies that carry data are asking for a higher price for data that makes others earn from the data. They want a higher price from companies like NetFlix, Amazon Prime, just because these companies are earning money from the data they carry.
If this gets approved, it will mean an invasion of privacy and also higher cost for the consumer.
Do you think ISP’s should be allowed a higher price depending on the data that is being transmitted through their Internet Pipes?
