No more free internet browsing or applications in India?
You might be hearing a lot of hue and cry about something called Net Neutrality in India. The issue came to light when Airtel announced the launch of Airtel Zero, where it will provide free access to its partnered apps and websites. In this case the partner was Flipkart. This particular deal did not go down well the users, and the whole situation kind of exploded. However, the first instance of violating net neutrality happened when Reliance Communications started providing free access to partner applications.
To understand the whole situation, we need t o know what is net neutrality? It is a concept in which the content and the application provider gets equal treatment from the telecom operators. There is access to all the websites, and nothing is blocked. There is no preferential treatment.
The whole scenario might change after the moves by Airtel and Reliance Communication decided to tie up with several websites. This move will lead to preferential treatment, which clearly violates the laws of net neutrality. What this means is that certain websites and application will get free access to the users, also the speed to download from these websites will be much faster. Another feature of this concept will be that the partnered website will also become the default website of the user.
Now you must be wondering that why the telecom operators and the application providers are going for these kinds of deals. The reason being that only partnered websites and application will be given preferential access. As far as the website and application providers are concerned, this deal gives them a huge database of all the customers.
The Telecom operators have faced a lot of flak because of this deal. The operators argue that they spend a lot on buying the spectrum and building the infrastructure, but new applications that provide free messaging and calling eat up into the operators’ profits. This is another way by which the operators earn more money on the access that they provide.
By now you might be thinking that how will it affect us? By tying-up with various websites and application providers, these telecom operators provide a free access to them, and the data which is being used is paid for by the website and the application provider. There are critics who think that in the longer run, this might affect the consumer’s first choice access to a website. The best example can be of a search engine. Suppose the telecom operator ties-up with a website which has a search engine, then the search engine will automatically become the first preference.
