A major public uproar has been continuing for last few days in India, especially on social media, alleging that platforms like Facebook’s Internet.org, which has Reliance Communications as its partner in India, and Airtel Zero of telecom giant Bharti Airtel, violate the principle of net neutrality.

India’s biggest online retailers, media houses, and service providers have joined hands with millions of Indians to defend their right to access all websites equally – in other words a movement has started in India against telecommunication companies and Facebook’s Internet.org.

One of the biggest online retailers Flipkart recently announced it would pull out of talks with Airtel over “Airtel Zero” – under the scheme, app firms sign a contract and Airtel provides the apps for free to its customers, a project that activists say would violate net neutrality. Later, MakeMyTrip, Amazon India, Cleartrip, NDTV, Newshunt and the Times Group announced that they are stepping away from Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, which provides Internet access to a limited portion of the Internet for free.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, had to come out to defend his Internet.org programme saying universal connectivity and net neutrality “can and must” coexist. “We’re proud of this progress. But some people have criticized the concept of zero-rating that allows Internet.org to deliver free basic Internet services, saying that offering some services for free goes against the spirit of net neutrality. I strongly disagree with this. We fully support net neutrality. We want to keep the Internet open. Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting access to services you want to use. It’s an essential part of the open internet, and we are fully committed to it. For people who are not on the Internet though, having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than having no ability to connect and share at all. That’s why programs like Internet.org are important and can co-exist with net neutrality regulations,” he said.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is currently running consultations about net neutrality, but people are arguing that changing the rules on net neutrality would allow companies to pay for higher Internet speeds on their websites, which could slow down other websites and ultimately allow big telcos to dominate the market. Their biggest concerns are: Telecom operators could discriminate against certain types of content and political opinions, they could hurt consumers and diminish innovation in apps and content spaces, discriminatory pricing proposals could raise anti-competitive concerns, and a cartel of telecom operators could degrade traditional Internet access to force apps and content providers to use the telecom operators new “premium” service (without the degrading of access).

The activists allege that TRAI is planning to allow telecom operators to block apps and websites to extort more money from consumers and businesses — an extreme violation of net neutrality. They want to remind TRAI that their job is to protect the rights of consumers, not the profit margins of telcos. They are demanding access to the free, open Internet.

Zuckerberg says #NetNeutrality & http://t.co/TH7bMgnfgb can coexist. That’s like saying freedom & slavery can coexist. — Mahesh Murthy (@maheshmurthy) April 16, 2015

The Internet and Mobile Association of India, which counts firms like Google, Facebook, Snapdeal, Ola, MakeMyTrip and Saavn as its members, also slammed TRAI and its paper. “It looks like Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, in its consultation paper, has copy-pasted from submissions of telcos. India has a robust and at times, overbearing IT Act. The paper makes an assumption that Internet doesn’t come under any regulations, which is incorrect. All Internet companies are regulated by IT Act,” IAMAI President Subho Ray said.

The regulator is believed to have received over 800,000 mails since it floated a consultation paper on regulatory framework for over-the-top services and applications on March 27. TRAI has requested that its stakeholders comment on its paper by April 24, and offer counter comments by May 8. It is also likely to hold an open house discussion on the issue soon.

The debate on network neutrality in India started after Airtel announced in December 2014 that it will charge additional rates for making voice calls (VoIP) from its network when using apps like WhatsApp and Skype.

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