New Delhi: A telecom department panel on net neutrality submitted its report to the communications & IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over the weekend. The report, which has been complied by a six-member committee appointed in January, will be a key component for the government’s policy on net neutrality, a concept which guarantees free and non-discriminatory access to the Web.
While the contents of the report weren’t yet known, ET had reported earlier that the committee was veering towards a view that any definition of net neutrality must maintain the core principles, which is not to allow blocking, prioritization and throttling of content providers on a network.
Some members of the committee, however, felt that the definition (of net neutrality) should not be at cross-purposes with the government’s policy and objectives of Digital India. The upshot is that essential services such as e-governance, as envisaged in the ‘Digital India’ plan, should be delivered on a preferential basis to end-users. The policy could thus allow for positive discrimination.
The report comes at a time the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is busy in the consultation process of defining net neutrality and whether over the top players should be brought under some licensing architecture.
The final Trai report along with the internal committee’s report will together define the government’s policy on net neutrality.
The government in the meanwhile has made its broad policy contours very clearly in favour of net neutrality. Last month, Prasad in Rajya Sabha had announced that the government was in favour of maintaining the core principles of net neutrality and internet for all.
