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The Times of India website carried coverage of the net neutrality fight in India.
It seems that the telecom authority stirred up a hornets nest by suggesting that net neutrality could come to an end in India:
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had created a flutter last month by floating a discussion paper which suggested that net neutrality could soon end. The issue generated much heartburn and was debated vigorously on online platforms, with politicians too weighing in.
Currently, India has a defacto net neutrality policy (which is to say no explicit policy at all). The major carriers are arguing for the right to charge content providers for carrying their content (big surprise).
Last month one of the big web shopping sites in India, Flipkart, pulled out of Airtel Zero's program of offering free services to Airtel customers in return for payment by Flipkart directly to Airtel. (Similar to Netflix pays Comcast). Indian net neutrality fans were dancing in the streets for Flipkart's refusal to play along.
But apparently the carriers were less than pleased and started lobbying the regulators. This resulted in other (elected) government officials to rushing to net neutrality's defense. The dust has not yet settled on that debate.
The first linked page has a rather entertaining video name Save the Internet that explains the situation in India.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @02:06AM
The major carriers are arguing for the right to charge content providers for carrying their content (big surprise).
It is NOT a right! It seems we have gotten so used to this doublespeak that even places like soylent news are repeating it. They're "arguing for using their monopoly to charge content providers", or they're "arguing for a law to charge content providers". But in only the most twisted, sociopathic reimaging of the word is it a "right", and we should stop repeating the propaganda.
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Sunday May 24 2015, @11:23PM
Except that there are over 10 (it used to be 14 but a couple have pulled out in the last couple of years) cellular operators in India so no monopoly, and Reliance JIO is about to enter* the market (*has been about to enter since 2012 but has been delayed - the gov't has finally put some kind of deadline on it though so they're supposed to get it together).
By definition there is no "monopoly" - number portability is now in place so those who hate Airtel can vote with their wallets and (relatively) easily switch to Vodafone, Idea, Tata, Reliance (communications, not industries), MTS, Videocon or any one of the others.
The same is true in the wired broadband sector - there are well over 100 ISPs but **A LOT** of fragmentation and no open last-mile... similar to the US in some ways except the cable operators in many cities operate only a couple of square km instead of the whole city as is the case in the US, so any ISP trying to achieve decent coverage has a task and a half.
Personally, I support operators being able to do certain things to make their services better, but not in the way that Airtel wants to do it, which would create a multi-tier (or "fake" as some people call it) Internet. Caching and peering with GGC is a fairly common one in India and some other countries - some ISPs there advertise things such as "2mbps normal speed with 30mbps to Youtube".
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley