Who is saying what on Net Neutrality?

MUMBAI, INDIA: The recommendation by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) committee to regulate only domestic Internet-based calls will lead to breach of privacy and will be tough to monitor compliance, Nasscom has said.

"The recommendation will amount to breach of privacy because one, without doing deep packet inspection, you will not be able to distinguish the content and two, you will not be able to find if it is voice or non-voice," R Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom and former telecom secretary said.

He said it will be tough to break into the application unless keys or passwords to open application are available with the monitoring agency.

He cited telecom regulator TRAI's point which showed cost difference between calls and messaging service offered by telecom operators and over-the-top (OTT) players like Skype, WhatsApp, Viber etc.

"This whole exercise has come to how to protect revenues of telcos. That should not be objective how to protect voice revenues of telcos or SMS revenue of telcos. The objective should be to have rationale charging methodology which hastens the process of going to Digital India," he said.

Meanwhile, V Umashankar, a member of the six-member panel (set up by DoT) said that zero rating platforms which allow users free browsing on select website, have to be open to users of all telecom companies.

Citing an example, he said that the Airtel Zero plan violates the principles of Net Neutrality.

According to him, subscribers of all telecom operators should have access to all the services, and that the Zero rating platforms will be allowed only if they offer the same terms and conditions to all content providers and websites.

On the other hand, Telecom Watchdog, an NGO and co-petitioner in 2G spectrum case before Supreme Court, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the report is anti-consumer and bad for the business of Digital India.

"This report is a template for protecting and preserving their traditional voice revenues, which incumbents have already milked optimally and continue to do so through insidious tariff hikes. The committee's report is against the spirit of scientific development," Telecom Watchdog Secretary Anil Kumar said.