DoT Committee on net neutrality to meet on Feb 12

A committee of the department of telecommunications (DoT) on 'net neutrality' is scheduled to meet on February 12 to deliberate on formulating an effective public policy for net neutrality. This would be the second meeting of the committee. It had its first meeting on January 22.

The committee was set up to examine the economic impact of co-existence of a regulated telecom services sector and an unregulated content and applications sector, including over the top (OTT) services. The committee will recommend an overall policy, besides regulatory and technical responses, after assessing the issues related to these.

The committee will deliberate on view points of telecom service providers, over the top (OTT) players, civil society, academia and business associations, telecom operators associations, among others. Based on these, the committee will formulate the policy.

Under the principle of net-neutrality, telecom operators or anyone playing a role in delivery of internet must not impose any discriminating barrier for accessing internet or internet-based services. The issue of net neutrality had come to light recently when Bharti Airtel, India's biggest telecom service provider, decided to impose separate charges for calls made over internet connections. The company, though, had later withdrawn the proposal.

Industry regulator the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is expected to come out with a consultation paper to seek public view on regulating OTT players like Skype, WhatsApp and Viber, which facilitate making calls or sending text messages using internet, for free. OTT subscribers are only required to pay data charges for using these services.