The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled on Thursday (Jan. 2, 2025) against the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) second attempt to enforce network neutrality, the concept that everything Web traffic should be treated equally by telecommunications companies and by the Web. service providers (ISP).
The setback highlights India’s divergent path on the issue over the past decade and more recent attempts by telcos to find some space within India’s network neutrality approach to extract payments from the majors. technological platforms.
What is network neutrality and why is it important?
Network neutrality seems simple, but the US and Indian battles were started (and driven) by completely different motivations. American technology companies like Netflix were irritated by attempts by telcos and ISPs to extract payments from them to expand the bandwidth they made available on their services to meet demand. Digital rights advocates aligned themselves with technology companies on the issue, fearing the broader consequences of Web providers being allowed to establish “fast lanes” and “slow lanes,” an abstraction of the fight that quickly took over. momentum and resulted in the Obama administration’s first FCC. ruling on the matter.
India’s experience has been different. In 2014, before Reliance Industries Restricted’s Jio entered the market and made mobile data cheaper, Bharti Airtel Ltd tried to impose higher data rates on online calls on apps like Viber (WhatsApp had not yet introduced calling) , prompting a coordinated but ultimately widespread movement. against the practice of discriminatory data pricing. Back then, Facebook entered the debate with a huge marketing budget to defend its Free Fundamentals service, which aimed to provide some online services for users without a data plan. The discriminatory fight over data pricing became a fight over zero-rating, the specific practice of exempting certain data from fees.
An Attempted Double Telecommunications Crash That Threatens Network Neutrality
The defenders of network neutrality won. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) respectively banned discriminatory data pricing in 2016 and incorporated network neutrality into the Unified License (in 2018) that all telecom companies and ISPs must comply. As a result, telcos have not been allowed for a decade to sell tariffs such as exclusive WhatsApp packages, or to slow down or speed up certain online services compared to others.
“The Web must remain a permissionless platform,” RS Sharma, who chaired the debate on network neutrality as TRAI president in the late 2010s, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “The basic issue is that there should be complete unbundling, unbundling in the sense that you cannot become a gatekeeper” of online data as a telecom operator or ISP, Dr. Sharma said.
In the United States, the Obama-era rules were repealed by the FCC under President Trump in his first term, an effort led by then-Chairman Ajit Pai. Under the next Biden administration, the rules were reimposed by Pai’s successor, Jessica Rosenworcel.
The return of the network neutrality debate in India
Over the past two years, Indian telecom companies have pushed a demand that was irrelevant in 2014, when mobile Web traffic was negligible, but that has always been in the spotlight in the United States: forcing large companies of Web to pay for the volume of traffic they receive. occupy the networks of Web providers. Telcos call this a network usage fee, a demand that has alarmed network neutrality advocates.
Dr Sharma argued that it was a “useless” debate. “Ultimately, they (telcos and ISPs) are selling bandwidth and charging for it. If they want, they can increase the price of bandwidth, but they can’t increase the price of bandwidth. only for certain companies,” he said.
The Union government does not so far appear to seriously consider the demand, with a senior Transport Department official saying “no such proposal was being considered” last May, months after the telecom companies campaigned on the issue. On the other hand, the victories of the defenders of network neutrality have not fully borne fruit. In the years since the concept was consolidated into telecom licensing in 2018, TRAI recommended setting up of a multi-stakeholder body to advise on the issue. In 2022, the Department of Telecommunications rejected the proposal, citing COVID-19 austerity measures.
Published – January 4, 2025 01:01 pm IST
