Now, Trai must ensure faster, affordable access
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has done well to uphold the principle of Net neutrality. In its Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016, order, the regulator has banned differential tariffs and made clear that all content should be available at the same price. In other words, once a consumer pays for a data plan, he or she should be free to access any and all legal content on the World Wide Web. This not only gives consumers the freedom to choose for themselves but also allows all Internet companies a level playing field. Without Net neutrality, the big companies could easily gang up with each other to keep the smaller ones out of the ecosystem. The biggest impact of the Trai ruling is, of course, being felt by social network giant Facebook, which had recently launched the Free Basics programme in India to provide a ‘free' but limited version of the Internet to those who could not otherwise afford to access the full Internet. This limited service allowed users to access certain sites like Facebook and BBC for free but blocked access to others like Google. The argument here was simple: Some access to the Internet is better than no access, and also that those with limited but free access will eventually graduate to becoming paid users of the full Internet. To be fair, in a developing country like India, where a large chunk of the population still does not have access to the Internet and wherein the Internet could help catalyse economic growth and development at the grassroots level, this seemed like compelling logic. However, Trai has rightly rejected this argument for even in the absence of zero rating platforms such as Free Basics or previously telecom service provider Airtel's Airtel Zero, Internet penetration in India has grown by leaps and bounds. Moreover, kudos to Trai for insisting that, while Internet access for all is important, such access is meaningless if it comes at the cost of having compromised the Internet's most basic principles which make the web the empowering tool that it is today. In this context, it is important to underline that Trai isn't opposed to free Internet per se. In fact, the regulator has clarified in its order that data packs offering a limited amount of free access to the Internet are legal, as long as they don't discriminate on access to content.
Finally, a word of praise is in order for the many civil society activists who strove to raise awareness about this complex but crucial issue among the public as well as effectively lobbied Trai. The regulator, on its part, was also receptive to the public's concerns, even officially inviting comments from the public. But all said and done, it is unlikely that this order will be the last we hear on this issue. Irrespective of whether Facebook continues to fight for Free Basics in India, there are still other Net neutrality issues that will come up for debate over time, especially as the Indian market continues to expand.