Is net neutrality regulation becoming a hot cake for TRAI and DoT

Top ISPs in India in 2017Net neutrality has become a hot cake for Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) and Department of Telecom (DoT) at a time when some US technology companies are supporting the net neutrality concept in America.

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TRAI is yet to come out with its final recommendations on net neutrality after receiving comments from several stakeholders.

Both Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and OTT companies such as Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, etc. are looking forward for a favourable net neutrality regime in India.

TelecomLead.com is presenting highlights of comments from select stakeholders.
Net neutrality and FCCVodafone

At this stage, a wait and see approach would be more desirable and proportionate to both maintain the current open, democratic, affordable and nondiscriminatory internet and address any new risks that emerge.

TRAI has suggested that it may consider the options of a ‘wait and see approach’ or a ‘self-regulatory approach’. A wait and see approach may be a desirable option with regulatory oversight via competition law to address possible instance of misuse.

The US, which introduced a strict net neutrality regime are moving to a lighter touch framework. The FCC has ended investigations into current differential pricing offers.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, has said “It is evident that the FCC made a mistake … [and] injected tremendous uncertainty into the broadband market, and that’s the enemy of growth. …The U.S. experienced first-ever decline in broadband investment outside of a recession.”

India is a market where 20 percent of the existing subscribers are availing broadband services. 92 percent of broadband users are mobile users as of Dec 2016. It is estimated that over 90 percent of the internet users have their first experience of the internet through their mobile phones.

The priority in India at this stage is to drive the proliferation and adoption of broadband and ensure that the 1 billion unconnected are enabled and empowered to use mobile broadband services and that we achieve the vision of a Digital India.

The primary goal of public policy in the context of Net Neutrality should be directed towards achievement of developmental aims of the country by facilitating “Affordable Broadband”, “Quality Broadband” and “Universal Broadband” for its citizens.

Idea Cellular

Idea Cellular supports open internet and open access and believes that all measures should aim at giving customers the “freedom to choose”.

The policy direction also empowers the TSPs to be able to offer superior internet experience to their customers by improving the efficiency of their networks and contribute to realizing the Digital India vision.

Regulatory environment that allows innovation and experimentation and permits reasonable Traffic Management Practices (TMPs) is necessary.

Customers’ freedom of choice should span across content, devices, technology and access platforms in a non-discriminatory manner and lead to the most optimum quality of service experience. However, such non-discrimination should not be interpreted to denote lack of differentiation between specialized (business access customers) and retail customers, as the technical and QoS requirements are different in both the cases.

Regulatory guidelines on Net Neutrality must allow TSPs the freedom to offer specialized Services such as enterprise solutions, Internet of Things, Content Delivery Networks and interconnection arrangements, Virtual Private Network (VPN), and other services requiring a guaranteed level of QoS as well as a certain degree of discussion / collaboration between the Content / Application Provider and the TSP for guaranteeing the same.

Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio supports the basic tenets of net neutrality and believes that there should not be any unreasonable discrimination of Internet traffic based on content, nature of services, etc. subject to aspects such as national security and consumer interest.

It is often presumed that Internet must always work on a first-in-first-out traffic model of packet delivery. This is not always the case. Networks need to prioritize certain packets, says for essential services or caching servers for particular type of content and need to block certain packets identified as being harmful to the network.

Airtel

The industry is laden with a debt of INR 4.20 lakh crore, and will require investments of more than Rs 5 lakh crore in the coming years. The Indian telecom sector is subjected to one of the highest taxes and levies in the world. It is making a Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) of 1 percent, which is an unsustainable situation.

India needs not only Net Neutrality, but also “Net Equality”. Any policy around Net Neutrality must first promote universal Internet access through affordable services, massive investments required to build the network, innovative services, and ensuring the same rules for same/similar services.

Principles of net neutrality should be applicable to all Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), content providers, handset manufacturers and other stakeholders operating within the Internet ecosystem. The business practices of all stakeholders should be fair, transparent and nondiscriminatory.

GSMA

Market power should be assessed in light of all the competitive constraints faced by a firm rather than a theory that TSPs enjoy market power over other players, some of whom are powerful platforms, in the internet ecosystem. In fact, some of these online platforms have been subject to competition law investigations in a few jurisdictions. Based on the existing trends and evidence, the GSMA submits that one cannot conclude that as a general proposition that TSPs occupy a position of “gatekeeper” in the internet ecosystem.

Nasscom

Net neutrality does not prevent access providers from managing their networks, and should not prohibit traffic management. However, regulations should ensure that traffic management practices that impose arbitrary restrictions and discriminatory practices, including blocking, throttling, or altering of specific content, application, or services are strictly forbidden and any such actions should be punishable.

Reasonable traffic management techniques would ideally be on a temporary basis deployed during extraordinary conditions of congestion, and should be targeted towards solving the problem. There should be associated transparency and disclosure requirements when such situations arise. Traffic management practices should not directly and indirectly bring in any discrimination – price based/ non –price based e.g. source origin or destination of consumption etc.

Therefore, beyond the needs of optimizing the network and addressing traffic hazards through temporary measures, either manually or automatically, no discrimination should be permitted, that can lead to commercial benefits to TSPs and their partners.

Traffic management measures imposing restrictions that offer an unfair commercial advantage to access providers’ own services or those of their business partners are anticompetitive practices and should be forbidden under the law.

The scope of TRAI regulations should be entirely focused on ensuring that traffic management practices adopted by TSPs conform to the principles of Net Neutrality. Extension of current jurisdiction of TRAI is neither envisaged nor considered necessary in this context.

Cisco

Cisco has been an advocate for Open Internet principles, particularly as articulated in the Federal Communication Commission’s 2005 Internet Policy Statement. Open Internet principles can help shape service provider or operator conduct and consumer expectations and facilitate the organic development of the broadband market.

Cisco believes that given the evolution and differences of perspectives of regulators around the world, the major technological advances that will transform broadband networks’ architecture, how the traffic is managed and the financial implications and current state of the industry, it may be worthwhile for TRAI to take more time before implementing a regulatory framework that may turn out to be too rigid and out-pace a rapidly changing environment.

TRAI may be better off monitoring closely how these issues evolve in the next three to five years, and then with more perspective, create the appropriate regulatory framework. While we appreciate the research TRAI has conducted, we respectfully submit that it is too premature for India to move forward with the proposed regulatory framework.

AT&T

AT&T supports the broader traffic management approach under consideration by the TRAI as such policies should not interfere with service providers’ ability to manage their network in a reasonable and fair manner.

TRAI has the opportunity to preserve the Internet freedom and openness and promote the free flow of Internet base content and services, without over-regulation so as to enhance broadband investment and deployment.

AT&T encourages TRAI to limit the definition of Internet services to only mass-market retail broadband Internet access services with the capability to transmit and receive data from all or substantially all Internet end-points and to expressly exclude from specialized services such as Internet VoIP or IPTV, Internet of Things (IOT) and enterprise services such as managed services and virtual private networks, content delivery networks, hosting or data storage services or Internet backbone services.

Tata Teleservices

TRAI can protect net neutrality and consumer choice while also continuing to foster innovation by adopting a balanced approach. Non-discrimination is an important component of net neutrality. Differential treatment is not inherently discriminatory as long as any additional offer includes any content that meets the same, uniformly applied technical requirements.

When a given arrangement between a TSP and content provider is available to all TSPs on the same terms and conditions, there has a to be transparency on the speeds of the content that flows over networks.

IAMAI

Based on the pre-existing analysis of the TRAI and the background provided in the consultation paper, IAMAI recommends three broad principles to be expressly adopted as core constituents of network neutrality regulation in India:

No Blocking and filtering:

All sites, web services and applications on the internet must be equally accessible; there must be no attempts to blocking of sites or apps except by way of a statutory provision, legal order by a Court or a government authority.

No throttling:

All sites (specific internet services or different classes of internet services) must be accessible at the same speed to the user; there must be no speeding up or throttling of speed of sites.

No fast lanes or slow lanes:

All sites and web services should be accessible as per the speeds of the connection as desired by the end user and We believe these principles protect the end-to-end principle of internet communications; in turn decreasing entry barriers and in effect spurring innovation. These are hallmarks of the internet growth story in India which requires urgent regulatory intervention by the TRAI. Internet service providers and telecoms should not provide competitive advantage to certain individual apps or services over similarly placed apps or services.

COAI

We would like to express our concern regarding the piece-meal addressal of the issue of Net Neutrality and re-commencement of de novo consultations on Net Neutrality confined only to traffic management without dealing with the key issues related to OTT Players. A decision on the regulation of OTT players is a critical and inter-linked issue.

By adopting the piece meal approach, as highlighted above and not addressing the larger subject in a holistic manner; the TRAI is only adding ambiguity and uncertainty to the regulatory framework.

TRAI has further dropped the security and privacy related issues pertaining to OTT players that were raised in the pre-consultation and has now confined itself to traffic management practices and the implementation of the framework only.

TRAI by not dealing with the issues arising out of OTT communication services is placing licensed entities on a lower footing than unlicensed entities and allowing the regulatory arbitrage to continue. This is despite the fact that both the TRAI and the DoT Committee recognize the adverse impact of OTT communication services and the need to regulate these.

ISPAI

Net neutrality should be made applicable on stakeholders operating in Internet eco-system instead of merely TSPs. The OTT players, content service providers, websites, OTT communication service providers, handset manufacturers, etc. are critical part of internet ecosystem and influence the customer’s choice and thus, any principle of net neutrality should be made applicable on all these players.