Net Neutrality: India on The Verge of Destroying Internet?
BENGALURU: Over the past few days, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has caused concern because of its paper on Net Neutrality. In the paper, TRAI asked several telecom companies about the impact of Over-the-top (OTT) services, as reported by ET.
The OTT services include several VOIP based application like Skype, e-commerce portals like Flipkart, Social media websites like Facebook, online movie websites like Netflix and many more. TRAI has asked telecom operators if they can slow these websites and increase speed of other websites.
Restraining the use of major websites take away the freedom of how the Internet can be used. This affects the foundation of Net Neutrality. TRAI has also asked the telecom operators if they would like to make few apps/websites/services more expensive and those, which they would like to offer at cheap price.
Altering the traffic on Internet by charging more for one service but offering another service at a cheaper price shakes the principle on which Net Neutrality was built on. According to Tim Wu, founder of the term ‘Net Neutrality’, “the Internet inherently does not favor one application over others”.
TRAI’s paper on Net Neutrality and the response from Airtel has agitated people across India. In an announcement made recently, Airtel expressed its decision to start a VOIP pack, due to which, the customers would have to pay for using services like Skype, along with normal Internet charges.
This poses a serious threat to the survival of new startups that may have to pay a certain amount to telecom operators for providing access to their application.
Also Read:
