Net neutrality has come under much debate in India over the past few days with the Airtel Zero plan feared to cut at the root of the idea of treating all traffic on the Internet equally.
The Hindu hosted Pranesh Prakash from the Centre of Internet and Society and Vijay Anand, founder of The Start Up Centre, for a live discussion on Net neutrality and its future in India.
Sriram Srinivasan, Business Editor Online of The Hindu , moderated the discussion.
Why should we care about Net neutrality in India, a reader asked. “To ensure that when Airtel offers you “free Internet”, it isn’t, in fact, locking you up in a walled garden of a few services instead of the Internet,” Mr. Prakash said, adding that Net neutrality is a democratic principle in line with the right to equality in the Constitution.
But what if users want to pay for certain websites, asked another reader. That is only one side of the story, Mr. Anand said. “When you think about it from the other side, of people who are building companies and coming up with new ideas to make things better, it makes it an uphill battle.”
The full transcript of the debate is available on >http://thne.ws/netchat
