indo-asian news service
New Delhi, Nov 28: Industry stakeholders Tuesday gave a mixed reaction to the telecom regulator Trai’s recommendations on Net Neutrality (NN), with some terming the recommendations as “progressive” and “pragmatic” and others finding them “a bit simplistic in the light of increasing complexity in the economics of Internet”.
According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)’s recommendations are progressive and in line with the debates in the industry and user groups that had been raging for the last two years.
“For the industry, the recommendations are pragmatic in the sense that it recognises the requirements of expansion of digital services in the country, when it makes reasonable exceptions for specialised services, reasonable traffic management practices or fulfilling international treaty agreements,” IAMAI said in a statement.
“Special provisions for IoT (Internet of Things), specialised services and CDNs (content distribution network) reflect it is a forward looking recommendation that takes into account the needs of the foreseeable future,” IAMAI added. IAMAI maintained that the TRAI provisions were also conducive for nurturing the start-up ecosystem in the country, and would give a boost to improve ease of doing business, aiding in inviting investments in digital businesses in the country.
Indian IT industry apex body Nasscom said: “The recommendations are completely consistent with the basic construct of Nasscom recommendations calling for unrestrained and unimpeded access to all lawful content and services subject to national regulations related to security and privacy, and preventing service providers leveraging their exclusive control over access infrastructure to speed up, slow down or selectively enable or prevent access to certain content.”
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), however, expressed disappointment that the authority did not adopt the industry recommendation to have a wider approach to Net Neutrality.
“Inclusion of IoT remains a huge concern, and we will need to look closely at this. A committee to review and decide on network management violations is unnecessarily bureaucratic, and not in keeping with light-touch regulation or the ease of doing business,” COAI said.
