Vodafone Idea calls for equitable, inclusive access to all customers

Vodafone Idea has raised concerns over preferential telecom services as Airtel's priority postpaid plans using 5G slicing face scrutiny over net neutrality and equal internet access

Vodafone Idea has flagged preferential services for a set of users, alluding to the priority postpaid plans based on 5G slicing offered by Bharti Airtel, and has called for the creation of an equitable internet keeping consumer interest in focus.

 

“India’s digital growth has been built on the foundation of affordability and connectivity for all. At Vi, we strongly believe that every customer deserves a fair and consistent network experience. Offering preferential speeds or services based on user profile raises questions around equity and the principles of an equal digital ecosystem,” Vodafone Idea Chief Marketing Officer Avneesh Khosla said in a statement on Thursday.

 

“For India to continue its digital growth, even as the technology advances, it is important for innovation and monetisation models to keep the interests of all customers paramount, be transparent and, most of all, remain inclusive,” he added.

 

The statement comes a day after the parliamentary standing committee on communications and information technology head Nishikant Dubey, member of Parliament from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stated that concerns related to Airtel’s priority postpaid plans were examined in a meeting with officials from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the telecom regulator Trai.

 

While the panel examines whether the service falls foul of the net neutrality rules of non-discrimination, it is also learnt to be looking into whether the quality of service for prepaid users was getting degraded and whether differentiated access is being offered by digital platforms to users for a premium.

 

Airtel last week upgraded all its postpaid customers to plans offering a dependable network despite heavy congestion. Calling it ‘priority postpaid’, Airtel said it was using 5G slicing, which was a globally adopted practice and did not violate net neutrality norms, and was fully compliant with regulations issued by Trai and the Indian government.

 

The Sunil Mittal-backed company has offered to share live network data with authorities and be accountable for quality-of-service benchmarks. In its submission to the parliamentary panel and to DoT, Airtel has said that its service was content-neutral and involved no blocking, throttling, preferential treatment, or zero-rating.

 

Reliance Jio, in submissions to the committee, has also backed 5G slicing, noting that it was a standardised technology capability of 5G standalone (SA) networks that can cater to diverse public-interest connectivity requirements, which was also permitted by existing Indian regulations.

 

The carrier is learnt to have said that using different slices for different business classes or verticals meets the net neutrality requirements, but differential charging-based preferential slicing within any class should be done only if it is justified under transparent, application-agnostic and technically justified traffic management requirements.

 

Authorities can seek specific implementation details and technical arrangements relating to network slicing-based service offerings to assess conformance with net neutrality principles, it is learnt to have added.