THE first round in a battle between telecom operators, the industry watchdog, some big corporates and media organisations on one side and hundreds of thousands of netizens and net activists on the other over the issue of ‘net neutrality’ came to an end last week, with the ordinary net user winning the round handsomely.

Many of the large business firms and media houses, who had enthusiastically embraced the now failed bid by telecom giants to offer differential services to users — and trying to create artificial barriers in terms of access to internet traffic — retreated hastily following a massive backlash by ordinary citizens. Most of them are now propagating the mantra of net neutrality and are abandoning the agreements they had signed with the telecom majors.

The issue of net neutrality surfaced after Airtel, one of the largest telecom operators, came out with its Airtel Zero marketing initiative, allowing its customers to access apps on their smartphones for free (while most apps are generally free, users have to pay data charges to download them).

Companies that signed up for the Airtel Zero platform would bear the charges and smartphone users could download their apps without paying the data charges. Flipkart, a home-grown version of Amazon — which has been under immense pressure from the American e-retailer — enthusiastically joined the Airtel Zero platform.

Sachin Bansal, the CEO of the start-up, initially justified signing up with Airtel and dismissed activists critical of the move. “When foreign companies do it in India — Innovation,” he tweeted. “Indians do it — Violation. #NetNeutralityDiscrimination?”

But when netizens went hammer and tongs at the company, Flipkart — whose success can be attributed to net users patronising its services — saw the futility of alienating millions of netizens. The social media backlash woke up the management, which announced its withdrawal from Airtel Zero.

“We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet,” the company admitted. “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. After reviewing implications of zero rating deeply, we reached the conclusion that it doesn’t meet our standards of net neutrality and violates the principles that we stand for.”

The sharp reaction on social media also saw other firms — who were eager to join the bandwagon of discriminatory pricing and premium services on the net — proclaim their allegiance to the concept of net neutrality.

Travel site Cleartrip, which had signed up with Facebook’s Internet.org initiative — Reliance Communications has partnered with the American social media giant to provide free internet access to 33 websites — backed out of the deal once the backlash took place. “While our original intent was noble, it is impossible to pretend there is no conflict of interest (both real and perceived) in our decision to be a participant in Internet.org,” said the company. “In light of this, Cleartrip has withdrawn…association with and participation in Internet.org entirely.”

Media giant the Times group, which had also associated with Internet.org, also ‘committed’ to withdraw from the initiative if its competitors such as India Today, NDTV and BBC among others pulled out from the zero-rate platform.

TELECOM firms, who have been aggressively pitching for spectrum by bidding high prices for different circles, are finding millions of users abandoning their services and opting for so-called ‘over the top’ (OTT) service providers such as WhatsApp, Skype, Viber and Google Talk. Indeed, millions of Indians do not use text messaging services, depending instead of WhatsApp or Facebook’s Messenger.

Recently, both platforms started offering voice services to their customers. Smartphone users having access to data can make calls to friends and relatives anywhere in India and even around the globe. While they do not pay for the voice or texting services, they pay the telecom firms for the data charges.

The telecom industry has been demanding restrictions on OTT service providers, claiming that their revenues — and the future of the telecom sector — are getting impacted. They say they would not have the money needed to invest in new generation infrastructure.

But internet activists ridicule such claims, pointing out that their revenues are soaring, as millions of new internet users — mostly accessing data through their smartphones — are guzzling terrabytes of data.

Surprisingly, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the industry watchdog, appears to be backing the entrenched players. TRAI has — stealthily, say its critics — put up a consultation paper to get the views of netizens and others as to whether internet service providers could enter into deals with commercial websites, which would disrupt the present level-playing field.

The issue of net neutrality has been debated widely in many other countries and internationally there is a major movement against disturbing the present arrangements, where users are able to access all websites at the same speed and cost. Generally, telecom service providers do not give preferential treatment to one web site — for instance, by providing high-speed access to some sites, and slowing down the sites of rival firms — or discriminate on commercial basis or for monetary considerations.

The TRAI and leading telecom players in India want to change the current scenario; ironically, companies such as Facebook and Flipkart, which would never have emerged as successful players if net neutrality had not been adopted globally, were among the major backers of this new initiative.

In a stinging criticism of the TRAI’s assault of the concept of net-neutrality, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), accused the telecom industry watchdog of backing the agenda of telecom operators. “It looks like the TRAI in its consultation paper has copy-pasted from submissions of telcos,” says Subho Ray, president, IAMAI. “The paper makes an assumption that the internet doesn’t come under any regulation, which is incorrect. All internet companies are regulated by the IT Act.”

With activists spewing venom against TRAI and the telecom players, and more than 600,000 netizens dashing off emails to the regulator (organised by savetheinternet.in, a lobby set up by activists), those wanting to disrupt the concept of net neutrality appear to have backed off for the time being.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, April 20th , 2015

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