Net Neutrality Rules Approved
To ensure a free and fair digital economy that promotes inclusiveness and innovation, decentralized accessibility and free flow of data is must. However, it was observed in India that companies brought out "zero rating" packages like Facebook's Free basics service and Airtel's Airtel zero platform which allowed its customers to access a few mobile applications for free. This was against the global norms of Net Neutrality and hence rules to stop this practice were released.
What is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality means that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) cannot discriminate against Internet content and services by blocking, throttling or granting them higher speed access.
Current Status
After a year-long campaign by internet activists, the government finally forbade operators from charging "prohibitory tariffs" for data and throttling data speeds for any online service. India’s Internet will now be governed by the rules of net neutrality as the Digital Communications Commission (erstwhile Telecom Commission) has accepted the recommendations made by regulatory body TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Association of India). Some of the Net Neutrality rules include:
- Discriminatory treatment of content will be prohibited. No extra charge can be levied for browsing other internet channels.
- The rules bar ISPs from creating high-speed data lanes.
- The rules debar zero-rating packages like Facebook's Free Basics service, where certain content is provided for free like access to Facebook and these packages remains illegal in India.
What is outside the purview of Net Neutrality?
- Mission critical applications or over the top services like remote surgery and autonomous cars are kept out of the purview of this framework.
- Content Delivery Networks (CDN) have also been kept out. CDNs allow a telecom company to deliver content on their network, without accessing public internet. Players like Airtel, Reliance Jio are working in this field and in order to access the content provided by them, the user has be on the respective network.
