What is net neutrality

Why is Net Neutrality important for businesses?

Rishab Bailey, Director Legal, Society for Knowledge Commons, said the protection of net neutrality is important in order to maintain competition in the online space, ensure diversity of content and guaranttee accessibility. According to him, this is even more important in a country like India which does not have too much local content.

Net Neutrality is especially important for those small business owners and startups, who rely on the open Internet to launch their businesses, create a market, advertise their products and services, and distribute products to customers. Open Internet also fosters job growth, competition and innovation.

ISPs basically the gatekeepers to the Internet, and without Net Neutrality, they would seize every possible opportunity to profit from that gatekeeper control.

Is net neutrality just an India-centric issue?

It is not. Recently, new rules on how the internet should be governed were approved by the Federal Communications Commission in the US. This is to ensure Internet service providers neither block, throttle traffic nor give access priority for money. Europe is trying to correct a 2013 proposal for Net neutrality, in which privileged access was allowed to ‘specialized services.'

What's the stand of political parties?

Congress has strongly favoured the 'net neutrality', and has demanded that the government issue immediate policy directions to TRAI to scrap the controversial consultation paper in the matter and warned of protests if freedom of choice of Internet users was compromised. Demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government unequivocally take a stand in favour of 'net neutrality', Congress spokesman Ajay Maken has said the committee set up by the Telecom Ministry on the issue be disbanded.

Aam Aadmi Party has come out in support of net neutrality and demanded that all data and sites be treated and charged equally by telecom companies. Demanding net neutrality, AAP MLA, Adarsh Shastri said, "It is extremely important. Content and the medium to reach to the content should be independent. So medium which takes the user to the content should not have control on how to access it. It will lead to monopolistic situation."

Yuva Sena chief Aditya Thackeray has urged the TRAI to stall attempts to axe net neutrality. At the same time, CPI also said the NDA government should act to protect open Internet and net neutrality.