Don’t kill net neutrality

The decision in US will have echoes in India

Last Wednesday saw an online protest in America, “Internet-wide day of action to save net neutrality”, coordinated by online activists, start-ups and many large companies, including giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter. The issue was the reopening of the net neutrality debate under the Trump administration. The Federal Communications Commission, under its newly-appointed chairman, Ajit Pai, is looking to overturn its own ruling in 2015 that the internet is a public utility. More than 80,000 websites displayed banners and messages in support of net neutrality and over six million comments have been submitted to the FCC on the issue. The FCC will debate this until a final hearing in the US Congress in August. Recent opinion polls indicate that users are in favour of the current status. As many as 77 per cent of those surveyed support the FCC’s open internet order, including 73 per cent of Republicans, 80 per cent of Democrats and 76 per cent of Independents. But that may not prevent the law being overturned. Some big businesses, namely cable companies, would like the law changed and the FCC chairman says that it is a barrier to job creation.

But net neutrality is a cornerstone of fair online competition. If the internet is deemed a utility, an internet service provider must treat all content equally. An ISP can generate its own content, or tie up with content providers of choice. But it cannot selectively deliver some content at higher speeds. Neither can it deliberately slow down content, nor can it charge discriminatory tariffs or offer discounts for favoured content. This has obvious implications for e-commerce and entertainment. Consider a hypothetical case, where an online marketplace ties up with a given ISP to make transactions quicker, and the ISP then throttles back speeds for competing marketplaces. One of the internet’s virtues is that it provides small businesses and individuals a chance to compete with giants. If net neutrality is removed, big companies could leverage a huge competitive edge by doing deals with ISPs to ensure preferential treatment for their offerings. Indeed, even many large companies are uneasy — they fear being shouldered out by rivals. At the same time, the ISPs point out, with some justice, that some traffic management and discrimination are technically necessary; video content cannot afford latency, while emails can be delivered at lower speeds without loss of fidelity.

The Republican administration has already relaxed rules about online privacy, allowing ISPs to sell user-data. There is a real chance that the FCC will reverse the ruling that the internet is a public utility, thus allowing for discriminatory speeds and pricing. Any such ruling has potential consequences in India, which, of course, has no privacy law and has a tendency to “copypaste” technology policy. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in February 2016 adopted a stance that was similar to that of the FCC, when, among other things, it ruled that there could not be discriminatory pricing for data plans on the basis of content. But Trai also reopened the net neutrality debate this January when it floated another paper with a focus on traffic management. That debate continues and, whatever decision the FCC takes, it is likely to have echoes in India.