How Airtel goes wrong.

Airtel is the largest wireless carrier in india which was also amongt the first few that started telecommunications in India

Lately Airtel has been one of the most dumb and sick companies I have ever heard about on earth.  The entire issue is basically revolving around a concept called net neutrality

What net neutrality basically means is that all legal content on the Internet should be treated equally be it whatsapp voice calling or maybe a  wikipedia article or anything which you like such as youtube videos or porn or anything.

When whatsapp was about to roll out its voice calling feature in india, Airtel brought a new rule by which all forms of VOIP calls would be chargeable irrespective of whether the user did or did not have a data pack, this was a clear violation of net neutrality

What Airtel said in its defence was that Whatsapp and other OTT players were using it like a dumb pipe to carry data and don't pay airtel a single penny for the data carried . If the voice calling feature was brought on whatsapp their revenues from voice calls would significantly go down. Voice calling revenues still makes around 70 to 75 % of revenue for Airtel. Airtel and other telecom operators had already seen the kind of effect Whatsapp had on their SMS revenues. Airtel feared that Whatsapp voice calling would bring down its voice revenues and thereby its ability to invest in networks and hence justified its move to start charging for VOIP calls.

Now recently Airtel has brought a initiative called Airtel Zero which in terms of Airtel is a marketing campaign which will help developers reduce the marketing costs by as much as 65%. The question I would like to ask Airtel is that with marketing campaign such as Airtel Zero aren't you(Airtel) guys practically using android as a "dumb platform" just like how you say Whatsapp voice calling is using you like a "dumb pipe".

I mean think about it practically, Google basically spends millions of dollars every year in creating and refining Android. They also have to pay billions of dollars for running data centres that hosts the apps running on Play Store. They are also facing  million and in some cases billions of dollars of fines because of antitrust and anti competitive Issues. As far as I know Airtel does not spend a single penny helping Google in creating Android or hosting apps for the Play Store or helping Google when they are faced with anti competitive and antitrust issues in a EU.

The only way Google is able to make back all its money is by advertising. Now by launching something like Airtel Zero which as Airtel states helps developers reduce marketing costs by 65% isn't Airtel undercutting in Google's revnues just like how Whatsapp voice calling would undercut Airtel's voice revenues.

If Airtel Zero prevails won't Google lose a lot on advertising revenues. If Google loses these revenues how will they be able to fund the development of Android which runs on 90% of smartphones in India or be able to pay for the massive data centers they have running. How will they be able to pay the steep fines they face by EU ?

Lets be clear over here. Everyone is running a business be it Airtel or Google. Both are stock listed companies and have shareholders they need to answer to. If Airtel can't bare Whatsapp undercutting its revenues,even Google won't bare Airtel doing the same to it.

What if in future Google starts blocking access to Play Store for Airtel subscribers ? Has Airtel ever thought about that ? I mean if Airtel can't tolerate  Whatsapp eating your revenues,even Google can't tolerate Airtel eating their revenues. Airtel has executives who have MBA degrees from the best of universities but the kind of business decisions Airtel makes is mind boggling at best.