After facing significant backlash on its reported tie-up with Airtel’s net neutrality violating service Airtel Zero , e-commerce major ...
After facing significant backlash on its reported tie-up with Airtel’s net neutrality violating service Airtel Zero, e-commerce major Flipkart has pulled out of the service. This was first reported by NextBigWhat and has been confirmed by a Flipkart spokesperson.
Flipkart spokesperson told that they “will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero” and committing themselves to the “larger cause of Net Neutrality in India”.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Flipkart was planning to join Airtel Zero, that will enable companies to buy data from telcos and offer it to their consumers for free.
While this might initially seem beneficial for consumers, this violates net neutrality by discriminating various Internet services on the basis of price, since the cost of access automatically becomes higher for apps which are not enrolled with the platform.
This especially becomes critical in a price-conscious market like India where people tend to prefer “free” offerings over paid offerings, thereby creating a situation wherein competitors will also be forced to pay to telcos for a similar consumer access.
Such a move could significant impact the budding startup ecosystem since a scrappy app developer or a startup would no longer be able to compete with heavily funded players who could just buy the pipe to retain their supremacy among consumers. It could also could lead to a monopolistic market, since non-level playing field would mean lower incentives for companies to innovate and launch better products.
Flipkart’s full statement on Airtel Zero:
“We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet. Over the past few days, there has been a great amount of debate, both internally and externally, on the topic of zero rating, and we have a deeper understanding of the implications.
Based on this, we have decided on the following:
– We will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero.
– We will be committing ourselves to the larger cause of Net Neutrality in India. We will be internally discussing over the next few days, the details of actions we will take to support the cause.
– We will be working towards ensuring that the spirit of net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.”
