The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Wednesday issued a consultation paper on the issue of net-neutrality as it looked to formulate “final views on policy or regulatory interventions” on the subject.
The regulator, given the complexity of the subject, had decided to undertake a two-stage consultation process. The earlier issued pre-consultation, released in May 2016, was an attempt to identify the relevant issues in all the areas on which the Department of Telecom had sought TRAI’s recommendations.
“In this next stage, the Authority has considered all the relevant issues identified during the pre-consultation process and the preliminary inputs gathered from stakeholders on those issues. The purpose of this second stage of consultation is to proceed towards the formulation of final views on policy or regulatory interventions, where required, on the subject of net neutrality,” the regulator said.
The last date for public comments on the paper is February 15 and for counter comments is February 28.
TRAI has sought comments on what the principles for ensuring non-discriminatory access to content on the Internet could be in the Indian context and as to how Internet traffic and providers of Internet services should be understood in the context of net neutrality.
It has also raised the issue of traffic management practices, seeking comments on approaches that would be preferable, defining what constitutes reasonable traffic management practices or identifying a negative list of non-reasonable practices.
Traffic management practice refers to techniques used by the service providers to manage the safety, security and efficiency of their networks.
The consultation paper also questioned if certain services such as emergency situations and restrictions on unlawful content be treated as exceptions to any regulation on traffic management practice.
Further, TRAI has sought comments on defining practices such as blocking and throttling, and also tests to detect their deployment to check for preferential treatment of a particular application.
On the legal and policy front, the paper has sought opinion on issues such as which body should be responsible for monitoring and supervision and what actions should such body be empowered to take in case of any detected violation, among others.
