Net Neutral

Net Neutral

It is raging.  It is concerning the access to the contents of the internet without strings.   You are in control of where to go in the net, what you read and do on line.  There is no restriction imposed on the content unless it is illegal - a place where, freedom to express, an unhindered choice and no discrimination, exist.  That is the norm.  Equality is the key.  More than a million emails have been sent to the Indian regulator, The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) last week in support of Net Neutrality.  TRAI wanted answers to 20 questions through a consultation paper spread over 110 pages on the subject of discrimination between different types of data, by telecom networks.  

 

Airtel launched “Airtel Zero” in the beginning of April 2015.  The company listed the benefits to the customers and marketers in their web site - Customers enjoy free data access to a variety of mobile apps signed up with ‘Airtel Zero’.  App providers will pay for customers’ data charges and hence it is toll free access to their mobile application.  Here would be customers are tied to Airtel and the app provider pays to the platform owner the usage charges.  In effect the users selectively get the benefit of free data paid by someone else but restricted to the dealings with Airtel and the app provider.  Airtel boasted of providing equal opportunities to all, big or small.  Flipkart which decided to join hands a week before with Airtel Zero platform for providing Airtel subscribers free use of its application through Airtel Zero backtracked and walked away from the deal.   Flipkart also issued a statement committing to the larger cause of net neutrality in India.  A flip flop by Flipkart!  As a business proposition it is still good, but discriminatory.  It can be called a restrictive trade practice.  That is, when you access Flipkart through Airtel, you need to pay no data charges, whereas you will have to pay for it to access Flipkart through other providers like, Idea, BSNL, etc. You are being influenced / forced to deal with Flipkart only through Airtel.  

 

Earlier this year Reliance Communications partnered with Facebook through Mark Zuckerberg’s initiative to provide free internet to the mobile users through internet.org.  This free access is restricted to a bouquet of services covered by 33 websites.  RCom will provide to its customers free access to these sites.  Here again the customers are tied to these companies and a trading practice not above water.  It did not raise a storm then as in the case of Flipkart-Airtel deal.  The trigger has been Airtel Zero-Flipkart.  In both the cases data used by the user is not charged.

 

In United States, Comcast’s bid to acquire competitor Time Warner Cable last year, for $45 billion, fell through last week.  Fears were expressed in many quarters that the merged unit would have control of more than 50% of U.S. broadband market and viewed the proposed merger as anti competitive.  Comcast Corporation, a Nasdaq listed company, is U.S.’s largest video, high-speed internet and phone provider (Xfinity brand) and cable networks provider,  whereas the Time Warner is the world’s third largest television networks and filmed TV & Entertainment company.  The merger of these two would have created a monopoly situation in U.S.

 

Though the concept of ‘Net Neutrality’ is a highly debating topic world over for quite some time, it has arrived in India only now.  The regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has received more than a million mails through savetheinternet.in campaign for net neutrality.   Alas, the TRAI’s role in India is only advisory in nature and does not have the teeth.   And The Information Technology Act, 2000 does not have provisions that prevent service providers from controlling the internet to serve their business needs.

 

Unless the Government acts earnestly, the Indian users of the net will have in future only restricted access and will know only what mighty others want you to know.  As the word ‘internet’ has become synonymous with knowledge and the day will not be far off when your acquired restricted knowledge will not be ‘power’, when the normal saying is ‘Knowledge is Power’.