India Approves New Net Neutrality Rules, Signs off on New Telecom Policy

New Delhi: Eight months after India’s telecom regulator came out swinging heavily in favour of the principle of net neutrality, the department of telecommunications (DoT) has finally agreed to adopt the same. The recommendations proposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in November 2017 would prohibit Internet service providers (ISPs) from engaging in “any form of discrimination or interference” in the treatment of online content. ISPs will also not be able to engage in practices such as “blocking, degrading, slowing down or granting preferential speeds or treatment to any content”. The Telecom Commission (TC), the highest-decision making body within the DoT, on Wednesday approved the new neutrality rules, the new telecom policy and a host of other proposals that had come up for discussion. Exceptions and exemptions “The TC today approved net neutrality as recommended by TRAI. Now the licence agreements (with service providers) will be immediately amended and will be subject to principles of net neutrality,” telecom secretary Aruna Sundarajan told reporters, while noting that  that some critical services would be kept out of its purview. These exceptions have drawn some criticism. When the regulator passed its recommendations last year, it carved out two broad categories of services that would be exempt from the net neutrality rules. The first are “critical IoT services” and the second are what TRAI boss R S Sharma calls “specialised services”. In the past, Sharma has emphasized that there are “certain services were quality of service is essential”, which should allow them to be exempt from net neutrality regulation. His favourite example is comparing these services to that of an ambulance, which is allowed to bypass traffic rules. Other examples of exempted services include those involved with remote surgery, autonomous vehicles and enterprise-wired networks created through leased lines . The telecom regulator last year had suggested that DoT hard-code net neutrality into the licence agreement that all ISPs are required to sign.  This amendment to the licence agreements, TRAI had said, would “clarify the principle of unrestricted access”. If this is done, ISPs and telecom operators that engage in violations of net neutrality could see their licence agreements be cancelled.(READ MORE)