Net neutrality means that Internet service providers and governments should trea

t all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentiall

y by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or
mode of communication.Net Neutrality is extremely important for small business o
wners, startups and entrepreneurs, who can simply launch their businesses online
, advertise the products and sell them openly, without any discrimination.To und
erstand net neutrality let s take a look at a premium shopping mall located in an
area where people have no other option but to go to there to buy daily essential
s. The mall has some very premium restaurants that offer great food, good servic
e, along with a lot of customer pampering. Since they are fine-dining restaurant
s, the price of food is expensive and therefore, only a few can afford it.
Now the people have a choice; they can either visit the mall, pay a premium and
avail the best food in town, or simply go elsewhere. The problem is that there i
s no other place close by where people can go. The restaurant owners say that th
ey would like to offer food at a lower price but can t help since the mall owner i
s charging premium rent from them.
Now, imagine the mall owner as the Internet Service Provider (ISP), the restaura
nt owners are the various website-based service and information providers, and t
he customers are everyday people like you and me.Net neutrality is an important
component of an open Internet, where policies such as equal treatment of data an
d open web standards allow those on the Internet to easily communicate and condu
ct business without interference from a third party.A closed Internet refers to
the opposite situation, in which established persons, corporations or government
s favor certain uses. A closed Internet may have restricted access to necessary
web standards, artificially degrade some services, or explicitly filter out cont
ent.
The debate on network neutrality in India gathered public attention after Airtel
, a mobile telephony service provider in India, announced in December 2014 addit
ional charges for making voice calls (VoIP) from its network using apps like Wha
tsApp, Skype, etc.
In 2006, TRAI invited opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from v
arious telecom industry bodies and stakeholders.
In February 2012, the CEO of Bharti Airtel, Sunil Bharti Mittal suggested that s
ervices like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, say
ing that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should b
e a tax on the highway.In July 2012, Bharti Airtel's Director of Network Service
s, Jagbir Singh suggested that large Internet companies like Facebook and Google
should share revenues with telecom companies. According to him, Internet compan
ies were making big profits from small investments, whereas the telecom companie
s were actually investing in building networks. He also suggested that the telec
om regulator should establish interconnection charges for data services, similar
to those applied to voice calls.
In February 2014, Gopal Vittal, CEO of Airtel's India operations, said that comp
anies offering free messaging apps like Skype, Line and Whatsapp should be regul
ated similar to telecom operators.In August 2014, TRAI rejected a proposal from
telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenu
e with the carriers or the government.In October 2014, Vodafone India's CEO sugg
ested that companies like Facebook and Whatsapp should be taxed to ensure a leve
l playing field with telecom operators.
In April 2015, Airtel announced the "Airtel Zero" scheme. Under the scheme, app
firms sign a contract and Airtel provides the apps for free to its customers.The
reports of Flipkart, an e-commerce firm, joining the "Airtel Zero" scheme drew
negative response. People began to give the one-star rating to its app on Google
Play.Following the protests Flipkart decided to pull out of Airtel Zero.
Facebook and Reliance telecommunication also introduced the concept of Internet.
org. Internet.org is a partnership between social networking services company Fa
cebook and six companies (Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia and
Qualcomm) that plans to bring affordable access to selected Internet services t
o less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the develo
pment of new business models around the provision of Internet access.Until April

2015, Internet.org users could access (for free) only a few websites, and Faceb
ook's role as gatekeeper in determining what websites were in that list was crit
icised for violating net neutrality. In May 2015, Facebook announced that the In
ternet.org Platform would be opened to websites that met its criteria.
Pros For Net Neutrality
1.No Restrictions: Currently, there are no restrictions on what parts of the In
ternet that people can access, except for what local governments decide. For e
xample, there are no restrictions or preferences over emailing, file sharing, i
nstant messaging (IM), Voice over IP (VoIP), Video Conferencing, Podcasts, blog
s, RSS feeds, USENET, etc.
2.No Throttling: Currently, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can not change th
e download or upload transfer rates depending on what people are accessing.
Cons Against Net Neutral
ity
1.Restrictions/Censorship: ISPs, in addition to governments, can decide what pa
rts of the Internet that people can access and what parts are blocked. For ins
tance, ISPs could block peer to peer file transfers. Additionally, ISPs could
censor criticism against themselves, other companies, or politicians that they
favor.
2.Anti-Competition: Similar to the previous con, ISPs could block or prevent ac
cess to their competitors products, services, or web pages. Thus have restrict
ions against competition.
3.Throttling: ISPs can decide what types of services have prefer transfer rates
. For instance, Google's Gmail could be fast why their competitors Microsoft s H
otmail could be slower, depending on how much both companies pay the Internet S
ervice Providers. Another common example would be high data transfers, such as
peer to peer file transfers, could have slow rates than regular shorter data t
ransfer, such as email.
4.Money: ISPs could charge more money for more access to the Internet. ISPs be
lieve that heavier users of the Internet should pay more. This extra money cou
ld be used to increase the bandwidth of the Internet for everyone and drive pri
ces down. However, ISPs are already extremely profits and they can just as eas
ily increase prices for everyone. Keep in mind, that Internet connection price
s should be decreases why bandwidth increases. However in many parts of the wo
rld, this is not the case.
5.Monitoring: There is already a lot of monitoring on the Internet, however wit
hout Net Neutrality, ISPs could literally monitor everything that their custome
rs do on the Internet and sell or use that information as they choose.