Letters: Preserving Net neutrality

With reference to the editorial, “Bridging India’s digital divide” (December 27), platform services and zero-rated products are anti-competitive, predatory business strategies that risk creating digital divides by skewing the playing field in favour of applications and services that enjoy privileged pricing. They often masquerade as policies to narrow the digital divide but are discriminatory in essence and contrary to the interests of innovators and small entrepreneurs.
 
For instance, through Free Basics, Facebook wanted to piggyback on the network resources of telecom service providers (TSP) in India and distort consumer choice by robbing them of the real benefits of the internet. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s report, “The Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016” was a welcome endorsement of Net neutrality that safeguarded the internet against platform monopolies like Airtel Zero and Free Basics and retained the ability of users to not merely be consumers but also creators of content.

 
The regulator in its recommendations, “Delivering broadband quickly: What do we need to do?” categorically stated: “Leaving broadband deployment to market forces and banking on the catalyst of competition are simply not enough, especially in remote, rural, under-populated and underserved regions where at present no viable business case can be made. The government has to take the lead by stepping in and inducting the private sector for investment, skills, and problem-solving. It can adopt the strategy of going in for direct public investment in a national broadband network infrastructure and competition at the services and retail level.
 

The more widely prevalent strategy is the provision of an enabling environment including incentives for investing TSPs, ensuring open, non-discriminatory, affordable access as also ensuring roll-out requirements for uneconomic areas and spectrum re-farming or the repurposing of underused and digital dividend spectrum. Complementary action across a swathe of areas has to be the foundation on which broadband access is delivered.”

 
The three models it explored — a TSP agnostic model, a toll-free model and a direct benefit transfer-based model — in its consultation paper on free data were in compliance with its regulation on differential pricing of data services. The fear of the aggregator model of free internet violating the principle of Net neutrality is, therefore, unfounded. Net neutrality is an imperative for the government to further its Digital India initiative and for citizens to reap the benefits of a diverse internet.