DoT pushes for disallowing Telcos' zero rating plans -1

Via The Economic Times | Jun 30, 2015

The telecom department's much-awaited report on 'net neutrality' is said to have
recommended disallowing the controversial zero rating plans of telcos while pro
posing that throttling and any sort of prioritisation of Internet traffic should
be banned by the government. "There should be no paid prioritisation which crea
tes discrimination and no degradation of traffic on the internet on the basis of
applications, content, services or even the end user," a senior government offi
cial privy to the report said. The six-member committee's report together with t
he telecom regulator's recommendation will form the final basis of the governmen
t's policy on net neutrality, a principle that guarantees consumers equal and no
n-discriminatory access to all data, apps and services on Internet, with no disc
rimination on the basis of tariffs or speed. ET had reported in May, that the si
x-member government committee concurred that zero-rating plans which involve com
mercial arrangements at the back-end violate the idea of net neutrality as they
seem to provide discriminatory access to select content.