A new consultation paper by Trai suggests that all apps and websites should be regulated to be accessed in India. You can read the full paper as a PDF on Trai's site but it is over 100 pages of roundabout language that seems designed to be hard to read. Don't get put off though, because this could really affect you. Reading the paper, you get the sense that Trai wants apps like Skype, Whatsapp and Viber to cost you more to use, despite saying that net neutrality is important.
In fact, Trai's draft also goes beyond teleco issues, and talks about healthcare, cultural sensitivity and cyber-bullying. There are different government departments that already look at these different issues, so should Trai be getting involved?
These regulations could lay the groundwork for higher prices to access your favourite websites. The apps that you want to use might not be available at all if licensing becomes required. And it could become harder than ever for Indians to start online businesses, as more and more layers of bureaucracy get added.
What do you think? Should apps and websites be licensed? Do you think that companies like Vodafone and Airtel should be allowed you to charge a special fee for every site, the way you pay for different channel packages on your television?
Net Neutrality must be respected in India and anywhere around the world. Instead of giving certain services for free, why can't provides just drop the overall prices. New plans like Airtel Zero, Internet.Org (Reliance) and free Whatsapp, Facebook and Wikipedia (Aircel) just show how much profit these companies make from us when we previously had no access to them.
For all those who think these plans are good, imagine just some of the possible side-effects:
Worst of all:
Think about it......
PS:Tanuj, I dropped he blog link
I strictly oppose Airtel's 'zero' project, everything which we see online comes under the 'INTERNET', this is like an offence to me, surfing through a handful sites for free but giving a large amount of money for suring the others? NO, HELL NO.
These companies just see their profit, apps like WhatsApp which allows us to make calls to registered users for free with an amount of data, are you angry Airtel that your bussiness is going down? Well, let it be, we simply don't care, you have such high rates for data packs, BSNL is 1000x better than you, it has so low rates and even let's us call for free at night with landlines.