Net neutrality: Trai does well to recommend hard-coding it in licence terms
The Indian regulator has
taken a position in stark contrast to its US counterpart, the FCC whose actions
are a reminder that regulation itself is subject to political vagaries, &
changing governments
TRAI has come out with its
recommendations for the net-neutrality
regime in India. This comes close on the heels of its counterpart in the US
turning its back on it two years after it had endorsed it. The author looks at
TRAI’s recommendations and also at what the big influencers were in this matter
globally.
We can now
say, with some certainty, that the Indian telecom regulator (TRAI)’s support
for net-neutrality is among the strongest in the world. The timing could not be
more auspicious – TRAI now stands tall alongside European regulators, even as
it positions itself in stark contrast to its US counterpart, the Federal Communication
Commission, where the Trump appointee Chairman Ajit Pai infamously proposed a
roll back of net-neutrality rules last week.
Yesterday,
TRAI recommended that internet service providers (including telecom operators)
be restricted from engaging in any discriminatory treatment of content or
entering into any agreement that has such effect. Discrimination, whether based
on the sender or receiver of the content, the protocols used or the equipment
being used to access the internet is prohibited. In addition, TRAI recommends specific rules
against blocking, degrading, slowing down or granting preferential treatment to
any content. It’s a recommendation, and
not yet a rule, because it is to be implemented by amending the license
agreements that govern all providers of internet access – which is under the
remit of the Department of Telecom. But by providing the text of the rule, TRAI
has paved the way for smooth passage of these amendments by government.
In a sense,
this principled commitment to net-neutrality was expected. In 2016, following a
highly charged debate with the fate of Facebook’s FreeBasics hanging in the
balance, TRAI banned ISPs from charging discriminatory tariffs for data based
on the content being accessed. The next obvious question was that of
discriminatory speeds – examples of ISPs slowing down or blocking web content
seen to threaten their businesses had been the most visible violation for
net-neutrality debates globally (think: Comcast throttling BitTorrent). The
nitty-gritty of what such a rule should look like is unarguably complex- over
the last year TRAI held multiple public consultations– debating tricky issues
like defining exceptions to the rule, the treatment of ‘specialised services’
(that have different characteristics from the internet), evolving technologies
like Internet of Things (IoT) and how to monitor violations. TRAIs
recommendations take a position on each of these, the nuances of which will be
debated in the following weeks.
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