There are reports from Times of India regarding Net Neutrality which state that the Government of India will open up about Net Neutrality and mostly will support Net Neutrality. So all customers will be able to access the internet openly, equally and there will be no prioritizing and discriminating in terms of Internet.
A six member panel which researched and submitted a report on Net Neutrality. The statement report submitted by them will be used to make a government policy for net neutrality, the report is currently in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Because of the net neutrality law in US, AT&T were fined 100 million dollars by , the Federal Communications Commission for reducing the internet speed of customers with an unlimited data plan, after specific data usage limit of users.
The Dept. of Telecommunications report will be made public in a week’s time. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report is however in the making.
www.savetheinternet.in has been formed to protest against the initiatives and concepts which violate the rules of the internet. From this website users can directly send an email regarding their grievances regarding service providers to TRAI directly. With more than 11 lakh petitions the website received an amazing reaction.
Airtel earlier this year introduced Airtel Zero initiative in partnership with FlipKart and other chatting, e-commerce, gaming portals and other companies, which allowed users to access smartphone apps and services in partnership with Airtel. However due to heavy criticism from users and other companies, FlipKart walked out of the partnership. There were huge protests and petitions from the common-man as well, claiming that Airtel was violating the Net Neutrality platform.
Facebook had also come up with this concept partnering with Reliance, ‘open’ Internet.org policy for all makers in India, which was similar to Airtel Zero and it received heavy criticism as well because of which firms like Cleartrip and NDTV walked out of internet.org project.
As per the Net Neutrality standard everyone including the service providers and government and private organizations should follow the standard and keep the internet free and open for all users, keeping the internet equal. Thus keeping all the services like content, sites, apps and more provided to users equally at the same cost to all users without any discriminations of facilities.
However in India, this law has not been amended yet and there are no specific laws here for Net Neutrality. The latest report regarding which was released this April.
TRAI and DoT have been in support of Net Neutrality, however no official written update has been conveyed by them.
Users don’t need to worry as TRAI aren’t buying Airtel Zero or Facebook’s Internet.org. DoT are fighting for net neutrality and demand free internet.
