IT industry body Nasscom has said telecom regulator Trai should give complete flexibility to apps and websites for deciding on provisions for rewarding free data to customers.
In its response to consultation paper of Trai on free data for telecom customers, the body also said operators should not have direct or indirect influence on the content that customers view on the Internet.
It said the purpose of free data or concessions on data usage as reward is to encourage users to explore Internet. “When the reward is given by the platform and not by the individual website, it should not have any conditions attached that translate into discrimination between websites and apps or have any conditions as to which websites and apps may be accessed, either implicitly or explicitly, including stipulations regarding technology or content,” Nasscom said.
The body also said there should be no stipulations on how the data reward can be used by the customer, like restricting its use to specific websites. Nasscom in its suggestions invoked net-neutrality to keep intervention of telecom operators out of free data reward decision of websites or applications.
“Net Neutrality is a universal concept (recently upheld by the US courts as well as other nations in the past) where TSPs (telecom service providers), as access providers, have no power to influence consumer choice relating to services, applications, content that a consumer accesses,” said Nasscom.