VSNL plays a dirty trick on corp customers

11 Aug 2001


      VSNL plays a dirty trick on corp customers
ALLEN J. MENDONCA
BANGALORE: In what can only be seen as a highly controversial move,
VSNL, India's largest ISP, on Thursday blocked all corporate email
across the country on its networks, barring e-mails being sent via
leased lines.
The method is simple - no mail originating from a VSNL dialup line
will be forwarded (and will in effect be bounced) unless it is in the
form of user@vsnl.com, user@vsnl.net, user@vsnl.net.in or
user@vsnl.in. Try to send a mail such as user@yahoo.com,
user@hotmail.com user@yourcompany.com, and your mail will be rejected.
This immediately stops any valid dialup user of VSNL in India from
sending out mail using his or her corporate or personal identity.
VSNL director (operations) K.P. Tiwari claimed that this was to
"protect" its customers from things such as spam, but this weak cover
story didn't last even a few seconds as VSNL openly advertised (in the
same e-mail message sent to users) a premium service that allows
non-VSNL-domain mailing at a tremendous cost, with fixed limits.
While users can still send non-VSNL domain mail via web-interfaces
provided by many services such as indiatimes.com, yahoo.com,
hotmail.com, it prevents people from using industry standard mailers
such as Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, etc, which depend on being able to
send mail using the SMTP protocol via their ISP's mail relay
servers. The effect of this is devastating.
For one, VSNL gave no notice of their intention to do this, giving
people no chance at all to arrange for alternatives. Secondly, the
motives VSNL offers for this move don't hold water at all.
The real reason appears to be that VSNL is seeking alternate sources
of revenue (see http://internet.vsnl.com/vmail/vmail.html), while at
the same flexing its monopolistic muscles (while it can).
The results of this move are very likely to be
anything VSNL expected.
1. VSNL has changed operational rules of its service in such a way as
to in effect stop services to legitimate customers unless they either
pay more or change their e-mail address. This is something easily
challengeable in a consumer court, and reports are that such moves are
already afoot.
2. While many customers will leave VSNL for other ISPs, it is very
likely that other ISPs are also going to introduce such limitations,
to reap the financial benefits of VSNL's move - probably in the form
of lower rates than quoted at
http://internet.vsnl.com/vmail/vmail.html - but with the same overall
effect on customers. This is similar to all airlines raising their
rates when Indian Airlines does.
Exocore Consulting CTO Atul Chitnis had this to say, "ironically, this
move affects mostly Microsoft Windows users, as their mail programs do
not have the facility to deliver mail directly to the destination (in
technical terms - MX-based delivery). Linux and other Unix users are
affected only to the extent that they need to reconfigure their
system's Mail Transport Agents (MTA) such as sendmail, qmail, postfix,
etc, to deliver mail directly rather than via a relay server. Total
downtime would be about 10 minutes overall."
Chitnis proved this by sending us an e-mail message using his own
domain name (exocore.com) from his notebook that runs Linux, via a
VSNL dialup account.
How will the government react to such a flexing of VSNL's monopolistic
muscles? That remains to be seen, but it is clear that something needs
to be done. India cannot afford to be seen as a "user-unfriendly"
place in the current context of globalisation.
-- 
There are three things I have always loved and never understood --
art, music, and women.

parag mehta

parag mehta