Airtel, Reliance, BSNL or any other telecom companies you know about has been breaking the laws of net neutrality long before you can think of
Net Neutrality the term coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003 is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.
While the havoc about the telecom companies breaking the laws of the internet is very new to India with last year Airtel trying to introduce differential pricing mechanism for mobile Internet usage where it wanted a differential pricing for VoIP. Airtel tried to have differential pricing, data capping or providing access to any websites or application (their partners) for free.
But is it really so that the telecom companies has started breaking the laws governing Internet by past few years!!!
Well, most of these telecom Companies including Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and even Indian state-owned telecommunications company BSNL has been breaking these laws long back you can even think about. most of you may not remember but these companies has been providing access to their own portal (Airtel Live, BSNL Portal, Reliance portal) for free in the process also providing various free content for downloading to its user.
Not a surprise if the they are now trying to bring differential pricing or free access to their partners, in fact they never faced any opposition from Indian users which made them think they can go through their own plans of business. But now with the fight for a neutral internet has made it to a global level, with more and more people getting to know what these laws really are about it has made it difficult for these telecom companies to with their plans.
Lets take Airtel’s latest salvo against net neutrality. Â Airtel launched Airtel Zero which is an open-marketing platform that allows customers to access a variety of mobile applications for free, with the data charges being paid by the applications.
While the telecom companies are pressurising the telecom regulatory authority of India to allow them to make money off consumers of internet in any way they want to, Indian Government has left it to all of us to decide what we really wish for.
