The internet is a free medium and should be accessed by all. That is the basic fundamental thought behind net neutrality, which has been a heated topic in India for a while now, but has now been planted firmly in the limelight with the Facebook championed Free Basics and the recent paper on differential pricing by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
TRAI has suggested that telcos can now price their data packages differently, depending on the kind of usage that the consumer wants. For instance, one now has a 2-3 GB package that can access every site online, but perhaps the user doesn’t care much for online shopping or certain social media sites, only using email and services like Whatsapp. The user can now choose just those packages, quite how DTH users choose sports, movies or entertainment packages based on their TV viewing preferences. Telcos claim that this is in public interest, and will encourage more users to jump on the internet bandwagon, citing how different packages for local, STD and ISD call packages kept call tariffs competitive and affordable. All this depends on preferences of course.
On the face of it, all this sounds good. But there is massive opposition from different industry sectors to differential pricing. The general contention is that business interest will control what consumers can access and the idea of net neutrality will be defeated. This debate will continue for a while, despite the fact that there was a lot of support in the 24 lakh responses received by TRAI on the paper.
The idea of differential pricing seems logical but only if there is a transparent basis for pricing and all access is possible too. Internet usage shouldn’t be subject to business interests.
