Net Neutrality debate in India finding success as companies back out

TRAI questionnaire is difficult to comprehend for average internet users.

By Dileep Thekkethil

BENGALURU: When Mark Zuckerberg and Reliance introduced Facebook’s Internet.org initiative in India on October last year, no real discussion happened about its consequence and many thought it to be a boon rather than bane.

The debate over net neutrality picked up pace only after Airtel announced its Airtel Zero platform and All India Bakchod (AIB), a stand-up comedy group came up with a video urging people to save the internet from being monetized.

Within a few hours, Bollywood celebrities who saw the video, including the King of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan offered support for the campaign which became viral overnight with hash tag #SaveTheInternet. This campaign inadvertently became a mouth piece for disseminating the questions posed by the telecom regulator TRAI, seeking the opinion of the people about the growth of Over-the-top (OTT) players such as Whatsapp and Skype and enforcing a regulatory framework around these apps.

The 118 page questionnaire posed by TRAI is difficult to comprehend for an average internet user and it seems like the draft was prepared to favour telecom companies that push the idea of levying extra charges for using OTT services either from the user or from the provider. Thanks to a group of young minds who came up with a website savetheinternet.in that simplifies TRAI’s document using predefined templates of the 20 questions along with answers that favours net neutrality in India and opposing the idea of providing internet based services at different rates and speed.

Savetheinternet.in website made the task of completing the questionnaire easy by allowing users to edit the response if needed and send it within two to three clicks via their emails. The answers by default are in favour of net neutrality.

The questions put up by TRAI asks citizens about the licensing and regulation of internet-based services, the competitions these services have with service providers and the problems of service providers in investing in these services.

The petition details how packet data and voice/text messages send through mobile devices differ, which the key point of the debate is leading to net neutrality. There are also questions about services offered by providers like Reliance and lately Airtel by making a few websites and apps free, thereby forcing users to only use those services.

There were reports that Flipkart and Airtel has closed a deal for the inclusion of Flipkart App in the proposed Airtel Zero project which will offer the services off the shopping website free of cost.

Sachin Bansal, the CEO of Flipkart initially defended his company’s decision to be a part of Airtel Zero. He wrote on Twitter, “When foreign companies do it in India – Innovation. Indians do it – Violation. #NetNeutralityDiscrimination? I’m for #NetNeutrality. I spend time/money helping startups in india. Will never support things which suffocate innovation. Zero-rated apps for limited time doesn’t go against #NetNeutrality. Costs/competition are very high. Can’t be sustained for long Zero-rating only reduces data costs for users. Fears of a telecom big brother emerging are unfounded. Choice wins. Always.”

Airtel CEO came with a clarification e-mail stating that “There has been a deliberate effort by some quarters to confuse people that we will offer differential speeds or differential access for different sites. This is untrue. After all we earn revenues from data. If there are more customers who are on the Internet the better it is for our business. Our revenues are not dependent on which sites they visit because we charge on the basis of consumption of mega bytes not which site they visited.
In sum our platform is a technology platform and is open to all application developers and their customers. Our platform only provides a choice of how the data that is consumed is paid for by any of the two – the application provider or their customer. Whether any application provider enrolls on the platform or not is entirely their choice. All we have is a technology. We do not have a product or tariff plan that we have launched. We simply have a platform. And every application developer and their customer is free to choose in an entirely neutral way what they want to do. In conclusion, we stand fully committed to net neutrality to ensure the goals of the Prime Minister`s vision of digital India are met.”

But unfortunately their PR effort didn’t find fruition as major players who signed up for the Airtel Zero initiative backed out due to the raging public opinion. This includes Flipkart, which earlier came defending their inclusion in Airtel Zero.

The new statement released by Flipkart read “We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet. Over the past few days, there has been a great amount of debate, both internally and externally, on the topic of zero rating, and we have a deeper understanding of the implications. Based on this, we have decided on the following:

1)  We will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero.

2)  We will be committing ourselves to the larger cause of Net Neutrality in India. We will be internally discussing over the next few days, the details of actions we will take to support the cause.

3)  We will be working towards ensuring that the spirit of net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.”

The effect of the online debate also affected Internet.org campaign as they saw major media organizations making their way out. These include Times of India, NDTV, India Today, NDTV, IBNLive, NewsHunt, and BBC.

TRAI Chairman Rahul Khullar in an interview on Sunday said, “There has to be democratic debate. It’s a debate that is waiting to happen. Shrill voices do not win debate. Cool headed reasoned arguments on both sides are need of the hour.”

He also added “There are different practices in different jurisdictions. UK and parts of Europe do not practice strict net-neutrality. Even in US zero rating plans are permissible.”

Watch the Save the Internet video of AIB: