Disruptive Telecom & Net Neutrality

In my opinion days are seems to be numbered for telecom operators for those who are trying to control the internet. The fact is that, the technology space is so fascinating and growing exponentially that it is next to impossible for any industry or service providers to control it. These telcos have not learned from their previous experiences.

They tried to control and make money on SMS, MMS, Audio or Video (multi-media) services which was just not accepted by users the way they wanted it to be. Though Blackberry made some money by offering sms, mms, audio & video sharing through its BBM service where Blackberry & Telecom service provider enjoyed for a long while.
Although it was a breakhthrough service offered by Blackberry which was bundled as per month of fixed price instead of users paying for each time for per mms, audio or video (multi-media). Sooner or later whatsapp like services arrived and disrupted the market as it was platform & operator independent. Users popularised these services and we all know where blackberry's BBM service stands now. The telcos would have owned the entire multi-media sharing market by bundling it & making it affordable to users but they limited themselves by charging for each time a user user the service instead of bundling it at a nominal price so that they can rope in users and profit on business of scale.

Similarly, with the 3G & 4G speeds there are hundreds of apps vying for users attention for voice services. Although, voice over internet is present for some time but it is taking rapid inroads into mobile & portable devices which is simply unavoidable due to their quality of service and non-dependent of service providers.
An average user is 80% of the time in a wifi network either at home or office and does not use cellular data network which is more costlier than a home or office wifi. Telcos are already loosing this game of data on mobile by making this a costlier proposition for user. Instead they should sell the data service at par or lower than wifi cost so that user thinks that its safe to use mobile data without bothering about hefty charges.

Each skype call or whatsapp message or a youtube video eats aways their revenue when it is routed through non telco network like ISP. I do not have the figure for non telcos data usage by mobile devices which otherwise could have been through telecos network.

There are disruptions almost in all the businesses due to enablement & growth of technology since most of it is done on collaboration & co-operation model by which services & contents are free in the hands of users. This is never going to stop, telcos are thinking to make money by restricting the internet traffic and allowing those traffic who has partnerships with them, this is already happening like when i open youtube it works fine and when i open some other video browsing site they are slow, i experienced this phenomenon very often.
If they do so, in my opinion their major data usage is going to be shifted to internet service providers (wifi) which will grow by leaps & bound. Sooner or later users will abandon the telcos for data service like they did for multi-media, and this time again telcos will miss the opportunity.