Hindustan Times (Jalandhar)

Govt accepts Trai proposal on net neutrality

- Navadha Pandey navadha.p@livemint.com

NEWDELHI: Internet access in India will remain unfettered with the government accepting the telecom regulator’s recommenda­tions to introduce one of the strongest net neutrality protection­s in the world.

Net neutrality requires service providers to treat all internet traffic equally and prohibits discrimina­tion in the treatment of content, including practices such as degrading, slowing down or granting preferenti­al speeds.

Licence agreements with service providers will be immediatel­y amended and will be subject to principles of net neutrality, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararaj­an told reporters on Wednesday after the Telecom Commission approved the policy.

“To put this into the licence agreements of telecom companies is the strongest way of ensuring that they do not violate net neutrality,” said Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of MediaNama and co-founder of savetheint­ernet.in. “If an operator violates net neutrality, it will be a violation of licence conditions.”

Trai had backed the basic principles of an open and free internet in its recommenda­tions on net neutrality sent to the telecom department in November. It had then suggested that Internet of Things (IoT), as a class of services, should not be excluded from the scope of restrictio­n on nondiscrim­inatory treatment but certain critical services should be exempt from these rules.

“In the age of autonomous vehicles and remote diagnostic surgery, you need to prioritize (the speed of) certain kinds of traffic so those categories of critical services which will be subsequent­ly notified by the DoT will be kept out (of net neutrality norms) and that is in line with internatio­nal practices; everything else will conform to core principles of net neutrality,” Sundararja­n said.

DoT will also frame a policy on traffic management practices for service providers and separately set up a body of industry representa­tives and civil society to monitor and enforce net neutrality norms.

 ?? MINT/FILE ?? Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararaj­an
MINT/FILE Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararaj­an

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India