Net Neutrality: Raising a Voice for Free and Open Internet

In March 2015, TRAI put out the most awaited 118-page consultation paper asking the public for its opinion on 20 questions, most of them about how the Internet can be regulated.TRAI has requested the concerned people to submit their comments until 24th April, counter comments to which can be submitted till 8th May. The main reason why TRAI is planning to regulate the internet is the revenue losses suffered by the Telecom industries due to the cheaper services provided by OTT players. Not just cheaper, these services are much better than those provided by the Telecom companies. Revenue losses refer to a loss of profit, I.e., the TC are not incurring losses but have witnessed a decrease in their profits, which is known as Revenue loss.

Story of Internet.org in India: 
As mentioned above, Facebook’s internet.org initiative is being highly criticized without proper reasoning.

Quoting a few paragraphs from his post on Facebook:

First, I’ll share a quick story. Last year I visited Chandauli, a small village in northern India that had just been connected to the internet. 

In a classroom in the village, I had the chance to talk to a group of students who were learning to use the internet. It was an incredible experience to think that right there in that room might be a student with a big idea that could change the world — and now they could actually make that happen through the internet.

The internet is one of the most powerful tools for economic and social progress. It gives people access to jobs, knowledge and opportunities. It gives voice to the voiceless in our society, and it connects people with vital resources for health and education.
I believe everyone in the world deserves access to these opportunities.

This is why we created Internet.org, our effort to connect the whole world. By partnering with mobile operators and governments in different countries, Internet.org offers free access in local languages to basic internet services in areas like jobs, health, education and messaging. Internet.org lowers the cost of accessing the internet and raises the awareness of the internet’s value. It helps include everyone in the world’s opportunities.

In India, we’ve already rolled out free basic services on the Reliance network to millions of people in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Telangana. And we just launched in Indonesia on the Indosat network today.

We’re proud of this progress. But some people have criticized the concept of zero-rating that allows Internet.org to deliver free basic internet services, saying that offering some services for free goes against the spirit of net neutrality. I strongly disagree with this.

We fully support net neutrality. We want to keep the internet open. Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting access to services you want to use. It’s an essential part of the open internet, and we are fully committed to it.

But net neutrality is not in conflict with working to get more people connected. These two principles — universal connectivity and net neutrality — can and must coexist.

To give more people access to the internet, it is useful to offer some service for free. If someone can’t afford to pay for connectivity, it is always better to have some access than none at all.

Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes — and it never will. We’re open for all mobile operators and we’re not stopping anyone from joining. We want as many internet providers to join so as many people as possible can be connected.

It is crucial to understand that internet.org is not attacking or distorting the basic idea of Net Neutrality, and hence shouldn’t be cornered because of other incidents happening in the industry. You can read his full note here: Mark Zuckerburg on Net Neutrality in India.

The importance of net neutrality is not limited to individual users, but also to various small business owners, startups, entrepreneurs who launch their businesses on the internet on the basis of its free access. E-commerce has emerged as a booming market and has lured a lot of people in investing on the same to launch their businesses, market their products over the world and distribute the same to the customers. The free internet is the lifeline to the new ventures. With no net neutrality, such businesses would have no chance of marketing their products and services through the internet because of free and easy access to a certain set of websites.

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Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com