Net Neutrality debate :To licence OTTs or not?

Net neutrality principles rule that Internet service providers (ISPs) should not discriminate on online data by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment or mode of communication. Photo: AFP

Mumbai: Thousands of Internet users and activists in India took them to task online in early April to protest the violation of Net neutrality principles. They were reacting to Bharti Airtel Ltd’s Zero plan and the 20 questions raised by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) in its 27 March consultation paper on a regulatory framework for so-called over-the-top (OTT) services.

The questions included whether OTT services providers (such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and Hike) should be brought under the licensing regime; on payment for use of the telcos’ networks over and above the data charges paid by consumers; and whether telcos should be allowed to implement non-price based discrimination of services.

Net neutrality principles, however, rule that Internet service providers (ISPs) should not discriminate on online data by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment or mode of communication. And the zero-rating plan, if designed to favour an ISP’s own or its partner’s app or company, can place competing apps and companies at a disadvantage, be anti-competitive and violate Net neutrality principles.

The protests even prompted minister of communications and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) to tweet on 7 April: “...#Internet…belongs to entire humanity and not to a few. #NetNeutrality”—a tweet that assumes significance, given the country is yet to devise a law specific to Net neutrality.

Bowing to pressure from the uproar on Twitter and Facebook, India’s largest online retailer Flipkart Ltd on 14 March ended talks with Bharti Airtel to participate in the Airtel Zero plan. Airtel, too, issued a statement that very day, saying it “fully supports the concept of Net neutrality”, and adding that it did not “block” or “throttle” or provide “any form of preferential access”.