IMB 859

THE QUESTION OF NET NEUTRALITY

NEENA PANDEY AND RAHUL DE’

Neena Pandey, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam, and Rahul De’,
Professor of Information Systems, prepared this case for classroom discussion. This case was developed from available and
permitted sources of information. No funding was sought or received from any source for the development of this case. This
case is not intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data, or to show effective or inefficient handling of decision
or business processes.”

Copyright © 2021 by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. No part of the publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (including internet) –
without the permission of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
The Question of Net Neutrality

In February 2015, Internet.org (later rechristened Free Basics) was launched by Facebook Inc. in India. Following
the huge controversy that it evoked, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) announced that it was
considering a ruling on differential pricing for data services and was looking for public consultation on the same. 1
“Free Basics” – a product that claimed to provide a few websites free of cost to the people of India, seemed to
connect the unconnected. The scheme was launched in partnership with Reliance Communications, a well-
established internet service provider (ISP), with a plan to extend the partnership with other established telecom
ISPs, and the tagline being, “If the sun is free... if the air is free... Then why shouldn’t the Internet be free?” 2

Facebook was successful across the world with its social networking service, which was a commercial social media
platform. As part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, it had launched “Free Basics” in about 19
developing countries of the world across Asia, Africa, and Latin America; India being one of them. Through this
initiative, they wanted to make an impact on the lives of people by providing free health, education, and economic
information to a wider audience (who hitherto did not have access to the internet). Some of the applications
available through Free Basics were BBC News, AccuWeather, Facebook, BabyCenter, SmartBusiness, 1doc3, and
Maya.3 These offerings varied with region and also the service provider who entered an agreement with content
providers (CP) to offer Free Basics. (Refer to Exhibit 1 for the variance in internet penetration worldwide; and
Exhibit 1a for details of curbing the spread of Free Basics plan across the world.)

However, civil society had raised serious objections to this seemingly benign initiative of Facebook. There were
serious implications for telecommunications policies and regulations, including but not limited to freedom of
expression and consumer privacy. Based on the enormous response that TRAI received on its consultation paper
(and counter comments) from all stakeholders, the TRAI chief had to decide whether to allow such plans. (Refer to
Exhibit 2 for details on public response to the TRAI consultation paper.)

NET NEUTRALITY

The term “Net Neutrality” was coined by Prof. Tim Wu in January 2003 in a Law Review article.4 However, the first
law/order to preserve net neutrality was enacted only in March 2005, when the US Federal Communication
Commission (FCC) ordered a North Carolina based ISP, Madison River, to stop blocking the voice over internet
protocol (VoIP) service that was competing with Madison River’s own voice-calling product offering. 5 The other
landmark event in the history of the net-neutrality debate was the incident of Comcast interfering with and
blocking BitTorrent and Gnutella protocol traffic in 2007. Although Comcast was in denial, FCC stepped in and
opened an investigation on Comcast’s treatment of BitTorrent’s traffic. Comcast's argument was that it had to
choke peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic to manage bandwidth on its networks. FCC, in 2008, finally voted to punish
Comcast for its interference with network traffic. 6

In 2009, FCC began the net neutrality proceedings. However, Comcast appealed to the District of Columbia (DC)
circuit court on FCC’s ruling in 2010. This spelt trouble for FCC as the court questioned the ability of FCC to issue
net neutrality rules. While FCC was trying to work out a method to establish its authority to implement net
neutrality rules, Google and Verizon got together to oppose the net neutrality order. However, FCC managed to
issue the open internet rules in December 2010. As expected, it did not end there. Verizon challenged FCC by
appealing to the DC circuit court in 2011. Amid these developments, AT&T raised a furor by blocking “Facetime”
and making it available only to users of a certain plan. However, AT&T was forced to unblock Facetime owing to
pressure from public interest groups subscribing to FCC’s open internet rules.

1
https://www.trai.gov.in/consultation-paper-differential-pricing-data-services (Accessed on January 30, 2021)
2
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg (Accessed on December 21, 2020)
3
https://info.internet.org/en/story/platform/ (Accessed on November 20, 2020)
4
Wu, T. Network neutrality, broadband discrimination. Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology. Law, 2003, 2:141
5
https://whatisnetneutrality.tumblr.com/timeline (Accessed on March 1, 2021)
6
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/fcc-rules-against-comcast-bit-torrent-blocking (Accessed on November 21, 2020)
Page 2 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

In a dramatic turn of events, the DC circuit court overturned the open internet rules, and re-affirmed FCC’s
authority, but with caveats. FCC however did not give up and started working on alternatives in February 2014.
This news leaked and there was widespread public outcry, culminating in the “Internet Slowdown” day on
September 10, 2014. Many companies, public interest groups, and individuals in the United States (US)
participated in the “internet slowdown” movement, urging the public to comment on FCC’s proposed open
internet rules. Finally, on November 19, 2014, President Obama openly supported the open internet rules. On
February 26, 2015, FCC passed the open internet rules, applying to both wired and wireless network. The battle
continued, with both parties; supporters of open internet rules and its adversaries, engaged in heated debates.

A study at the New York University in 2010, which was widely quoted by the media, concluded that net neutrality
was likely to cost over 500,000 American jobs and $62 billion in revenues over the next 3 to 5 years. Without the
ability to regulate internet traffic, the study argued, service and content providers would not be able to provide
assured services to a segment of the market that was willing to pay for it. Another research firm, Frost and Sullivan
predicted that the net neutrality regulations could pass on up to $55 per month additional costs to the consumer.

NET NEUTRALITY ACROSS THE WORLD

The situation in Europe was different from that of the US. In Europe, there was considerable competition between
consumer ISPs and that constrained them from acting against net neutrality for the fear of losing customers. Also,
the biggest content and service companies in the European Union (EU) were from the US, and hence the discussion
on net neutrality took a political hue.

While the European Commission had started the discussion on net neutrality in 2006, the EU telecom reform
regulation recognized internet access as a fundamental right. Although net neutrality was mentioned in the
legislation, the mandate to promote an open and free internet was left to its member states. 7 However, the EU (in
October 2015) had passed a ruling that “specialized services” and zero-rating would be permitted. Zero-rating
essentially allowed users to access certain websites and consume data that did not get billed to their account. In
short, zero-rating violated the net neutrality principle. So did the special services tag, which was meant for
innovative services. (Refer to Exhibit 3 for the commonly zero-rated applications in Europe.)

FACEBOOK’S VIEWPOINT

Initial Experiments

Facebook saw huge potential in getting people online. Hence, it started persuading mobile phone companies in
developing countries (where the proportion of offline people was too high) to give free access to Facebook to all
the mobile phone users. This was done with a view that customers would then realize the value of the internet and
would subsequently start paying for web access. They experimented with this in Philippines and saw encouraging
results, leading to the launch of Internet.org, which included a set of free basic internet services. This was first
launched in Zambia in July 2014.

India Strategy

By 2014, India alone had around 100 million Facebook users. Since Facebook was banned in China, the company
looked at India as one of its most important markets, predicting its potential market to be close to $700-800
million. More than 30% of the new customers it hoped to add worldwide by 2020 was projected to come from
India.8 (Refer to Exhibit 4 for the advertisement by Facebook, in support of Free Basics.)

7
https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no18.pdf (Accessed on November 21, 2020)
8
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg (Accessed on December 21, 2020)
Page 3 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

Internet.org was designed for launch in India and it offered access to 36 bookmarked websites and Facebook. The
bouquet of sites included a weather app, sites on women issues, etc.; however, Facebook took the decision on the
sites to be included in the bouquet. Witnessing the complete control of the platform by Facebook, the civil society
in India grew skeptical. Nikhil Pahwa, the founder and editor of Medianama wrote, “What Zuckerberg means by
internet for all, is essentially Facebook for all, along with a few non-profit services thrown in to give it the
appearance of philanthropy.”9

Facebook management maintained, through public messages, that most of the issues against the platform were
caused by misconceptions about the product. Free Basics was a platform that aimed to provide basic internet free
for all the mobile subscribers in the country. The platform would make internet available to millions of people
across India for basic services.10 The services would be available in all the local languages and would be a platform
to help people share their ideas and creativity with the entire world.

Although the platform was being launched only with Reliance in the first phase, it could be integrated with any of
the telecom service providers and any set of websites in due course. Thus, contrary to the general perception in
the media, no website, application, or service provider was inherently excluded from partnering with the platform.
Over a period, they planned to enhance the number of applications available to the user for free as well as the
reach of the platform by providing the service across ISPs.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

In technical terms, to enable sponsored data through services like Free Basics, the last mile service 11 providers
needed to intercept the packets on the network and perform DPI (deep packet inspection). 12 This technology (DPI)
enabled Facebook to allow free access to only those websites that were included in the plan. (Refer to Exhibit 5 for
more details on DPI.)

DPI enabled the server to inspect virtually any field in the packet. Earlier, this process was compute-intensive and
hence increased the latency of the packet transmission or delayed messages. However, with technical
developments, this had become faster and extremely beneficial for network management. DPI was used for
efficient bandwidth utilization, and for security against spam and viruses.

DPI could help decode every bit of the data packet, from network-level details to the content of the email, name of
the person, and virtually anything in the packet. This allowed network operators to differentiate between
important and not so important data waiting to pass through the network. Thus, during congestion, network
administrators could prioritize movement of data based upon their urgency or importance. For instance, a year
earlier, on the eve of Christmas, Facebook’s network was choked. They resorted to using DPI to inspect the mail
content and prioritize official mails.

In addition, DPI could be used to preserve the integrity and security of the network and restrict the transmission of
unsolicited communication (spam) to end-users. Since the technology made it possible to identify the originator
and the recipient of content containing specific packets, it was used as a tool to secure sensitive networks. The
technology was also used as a defense mechanism against threats to national security (like buffer overflow and

9
https://www.medianama.com/2014/10/223-zuckerberg-india-internet-org/ (Accessed on November 21, 2020)
10
https://info.internet.org/en/blog/2015/02/10/internet-org-app-now-available-in-india/ (Accessed on November 21, 2020)
11
Last mile is the term used for the ways in which the end users directly access the internet through a network operator. It is the last segment
or last leg of a network connecting an end-user to the global internet or other communication system (DeNardis, 2014).
12
Deep packet inspection (DPI) is an advanced method of packet filtering that functions at the application layer of the OSI (open systems
interconnection) reference model. DPI makes it possible to find, identify, classify, reroute, or block packets with specific data or code payloads
that conventional packet filtering, which examines only packet headers, cannot detect
(http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/deep-packet-inspection-DPI) (Accessed on November 22, 2020)
Page 4 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

distributed denial of service). In such instances, DPI could be used to inspect the content of the packet and block
specific malware packets.

DPI CONCERNS

Though DPI could be utilized by the ISPs for better management of their bandwidth, and in certain instances, for
sensitive issues like national security, it raised serious concerns regarding user privacy.

In some countries where net neutrality laws were vigorously debated or had already been passed, Netherlands for
example, DPI was legal only in exceptional instances. Netherlands was the first country in the EU to implement net
neutrality standards. The standards provided guidelines on the exceptional instances where restricting and slowing
down traffic based on DPI was allowed. The instances are as follows: to minimize the effects of congestion, to
preserve the integrity and security of the network, to restrict the transmission of spam to end-users with their
consent, or to implement legislative provision or court orders. 13

A study by civil society members found that any platform using DPI technology may violate user privacy and
constrain end-user’s choices by discriminating between-content providers as well as provide opportunities for
firms to indulge in anti-competitive practices. To the extent that network administrators prioritized and de-
prioritized packets to strike a balance between demand and supply of bandwidth, it was acceptable. However, it
became an issue when this was done by ISPs for commercial gain, without ensuring adequate transparency in the
process.

Consumer Privacy

Since DPI enabled ISPs to locate originator and recipient information of each packet transmitted, the ability of the
internet end-user to remain anonymous was impaired significantly. In the absence of strict legal regulations, ISPs
could easily collect data (age, location, and shopping preferences) emanating from people’s computers and sell
them to advertising agencies. In this age of big data and personalized marketing, these anonymized sets of user
data were in high demand and tempted ISPs to stretch the usage of DPI to extreme limits.

Restricted Access

Since the techniques could be used by ISPs to slow down or restrict access based on domain names, protocols and
some other parameters, the choice of the end-user was severely constrained. While getting into a contract with
ISPs during an internet connection, it was usually assumed that the service providers were providing raw internet
access and that they did not make a decision on the accessibility of websites for the user. However, using DPI, the
ISPs could easily control users' choice of protocol, application, or function. This curtailing of choices by blocking or
slowing down “certain” kinds of traffic would violate privacy laws in most countries of the world.

A few months earlier, Airtel had launched a scheme called Airtel Zero, 14 which was supposed to provide an open
marketing platform that would allow customers to access mobile applications at zero data charges, something
similar to what was later offered by Free Basics. The scheme was launched to revive the interest of dormant
customers, attract new potential users, and increase retention. Although Airtel positioned this as a lucrative
proposal for customers as they could access their favorite mobile applications at no data charges and could also
encourage them to try out new applications, the underlying technology to get this offering to work was DPI.
Curtailing user choice depending upon the contracts that Airtel made with content providers was a definite
outcome of this scheme. Moreover, since India did not have strict regulations on the intent and extent of DPI

13
http://policyreview.info/articles/news/proof-pudding-eating/232 (Accessed on August 5, 2020)
14
http://cellit.in/airtel-launches-airtel-zero-a-win-win-platform-for-customers-and-marketers/ (Accessed on August 6, 2020)
Page 5 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

usage, this scheme could compromise user privacy significantly. This was why the Airtel Zero scheme faced strong
criticism from civil society members initially, followed by an overwhelming response by common internet users.

Blocking of BitTorrent

Another well-known example is the issue of BitTorrent protocol being blocked in India. One argument for blocking
BitTorrent was that it was propelling piracy. Though critics of this ban argued differently; was there a way to know
that every single download or upload using BitTorrent was illegal? It was a clear instance of curtailing users'
choices through regulations, which allowed using DPI to perform such operations. Technically, BitTorrent was just
a network protocol, the purpose of which was to transfer large files over the internet. To perform this, rather than
housing a file wholly on a server, it was broken down into fragments and then stored onto the end-user systems
that also used BitTorrent. Its use for transferring pirated copies of multimedia files was just an instance. Civil
society members argued that blocking the complete protocol was too drastic a measure.

Discriminating Content Providers with DPI

DPI could be used to discriminate among the content providers, more so when implemented with low
transparency. Since slowing down a particular website provided tremendous benefits to its competitor in the age
of complete digitization of businesses, the ISPs could get into contracts with business leaders (or others desperate
to reach a large section of the population through the internet) across domains and charge hefty prices for letting
their websites perform better than that of their competitor. Since this step helped to achieve commercial gains,
non-transparency of these contracts between the content-firms and ISPs could lead to a vicious circle. The
competition among the firms would get severe and result in end-users’ choices being proportionately constrained.
The only beneficiary would be the ISPs. Higher transparency of the deals between the ISPs and the content
providing firms would be the key to curb discrimination. This had a link with the competition, innovation, and start-
up environment of the country as well.

Innovation and Competition

The discrimination issue between content providers became more serious when there were big as well as small
players vying for the bandwidth. A start-up firm with a unique proposition might not be able to reach its intended
customers just because of its inability to pay upfront for a place in the slew of websites offered to the end user,
which a well-established firm in a similar domain of work could easily achieve. This could adversely affect
competition.

Airtel was the first telecom firm to launch such a commercial platform. Various other telecom companies were also
in a position to offer such platforms. However, the furor created by Airtel’s scheme dampened the spirits of those
firms, forcing them to postpone their platform launch.

Airtel, in their #airtelpledge15 declared that “the platform is open to all application developers, content providers
and internet sites on an equal basis. The same rate card is offered to all these providers on a totally non-
discriminatory basis.”

The question posed by critics was whether the rate would remain the same. Would the more established players in
the domain not push this rate card higher? Moreover, would it not establish their monopoly on the internet, killing
the competition from the start-ups in those domains?

15
https://www.facebook.com/AirtelIndia/posts/990076064349346:0 (Accessed on March 1, 2021)
Page 6 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

BENEFITS OF DEEP PACKET INSPECTION

It was possible to see the issue differently as well, where using DPI to provide differentiated services could
enhance competition and innovation rather than curtailing it.

Proponents of net neutrality argued that the use of DPI could curb innovation. However, speed-based services
could also help firms to offer differentiated services to their customers and hence boost innovation rather than
curb it. Tiered/differentiated services were used in almost all service industries and hence considered as a tested
economic model. Buying airplane tickets, for example, anyone can buy first class, business class or economy class
tickets on the same flight, where all the passengers leave and arrive at the same time, but receive different
treatment during the flight for which they pay different prices. Content or application developers could target a
particular tier to launch their product and hence customize their offerings to that tier. This would fuel innovation
more than curb it. Compared with the differentiated services in other industries where the firms offered schemes
like gold, silver and platinum depending upon the services included, the ISPs could also offer such models to the
end-users. Once such models were offered, it would provide better opportunities for the firms to innovate. The
start-ups would then be able to target a user group availing a particular type of service and innovate on the type of
applications catering only to them. Hence, innovation would not be hindered but enhanced.

Role of Intent and Transparency

The argument of enhancing innovation is double-edged. It depends on the intent behind discriminating data and
the transparency of doing so. It can be used as an anti-competitive tool. For example, the telecommunications
providers could block Skype traffic using DPI, because Skype competed with their core business. This was clearly an
anti-competitive use and against the true spirit of competition. These being commercial offerings, the limits of
intent could keep stretching; and under paucity of regulations, the dealings could get murkier and in the end, the
internet users would lose their privacy and choice.

Although it appears that Facebook was not interested in blocking competition, civil society questioned its motives:
Why would a corporation like Facebook want to provide free information? Why did they have restricted access to
only a few websites/applications as free? These economically disadvantaged people would have access to only
what Facebook decided to provide them. That was not the principle on which the internet was based.

Also, the intention of Facebook behind more internet penetration was questionable. For some businesses, more
end-users having access to the internet was directly linked to their revenues for the content providers as well as
the ISPs. However, for the government, India being a developing country, access to the internet was seen as a
definite way to move a few notches up the ladder of development. This raised a question: what cost should a
country be ready to pay to see the internet penetration numbers increase?

Other Issues

Free Basics may claim that that their intention was to enhance the reach of the internet to as many people in the
world as possible. Since they could not provide an unlimited number of websites or applications to all, they were
restricting the access to a few of them, enabled by DPI, in partnership with the ISPs. According to the social media
giant, it was better to have some access, though limited, than none.

In a developing country like India with dismally low internet penetration levels, the government firmly believed
that the internet could help in achieving the developmental aims of the country. This led to the launch of the
Digital India scheme. This initiative intended to integrate government departments with the people of India, its
three core components being creation of digital infrastructure, delivering services digitally, and digital literacy,

Page 7 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

leading to empowerment of the citizens. 16 In this context, the government needed support from the telecom
providers to enhance the internet infrastructure in the country.

For the government’s vision of Digital India to materialize by 2019, the first obstacle was the dearth of internet
infrastructure, where the ISPs were supposed to play a crucial role. However, a few content providing companies
hogged a lot of bandwidth and if ISPs did not charge these websites, the revenues generated by the ISPs would not
be enough to invest in infrastructure development.

With the mushrooming of various over-the-top 17 services and applications, the issue was getting serious. If ISPs
and the government did not find an appropriate solution for this bandwidth hogging, it would ultimately lead to
further congestion and abysmal user experience. Hence, charging content and application providers based on their
bandwidth usage seemed to be a sustainable long-term solution. This would achieve a much wider internet user
base and hence support the country in its developmental aims. The telecom firms would also earn revenues that
could be used to invest in the infrastructure. This would start a virtuous cycle of more internet penetration, more
users, and more content and applications offerings; and hence provide a major boost to the economy.

ANALYSIS QUESTIONS

1. What should the TRAI Chief do? Should he approve the launch of Free Basics?
a. Are the overarching concerns of civil society valid? Do they need to be addressed? If yes, how?
b. How can internet service providers be incentivized to invest further in infrastructure development?
c. Are the privacy concerns of civil society valid?
d. Is the right to access the internet a fundamental right, like the right to vote, or to practice religion? How
can internet penetration be increased?

BACKGROUND READINGS

Pre-reads:

1. https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-deep-packet-inspection-how-it-works-use-cases-dpi-and-more
(Accessed on March 1, 2021)
2. Landmark EU and US Net Neutrality Decisions: How Might Pending Decisions Impact Internet Fragmentation?
https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no18.pdf (Accessed on August 5, 2020)
3. https://whatisnetneutrality.tumblr.com/timeline (Accessed on March 1, 2021)

General References:

1. DeNardis, L., The Global War for Internet Governance. Yale University Press, 2014.
2. White Paper on Deep Packet Inspection http://tec.gov.in/pdf/Studypaper/White%20paper%20on%20DPI.pdf
(Accessed on November 22, 2020)
3. Disclosure, Deception, and Deep-Packet Inspection: The Role of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s Deceptive
Conduct Prohibitions in the Net Neutrality Debate
http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4481&context=flr (Accessed on November 22,
2020)
4. BingeOn Under the Microscope: Understanding T-Mobile’s Zero-Rating Implementation:
https://nslcsusc.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/kakhki16.pdf (Accessed on January 15, 2021)

16
http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/ (Accessed on December 23, 2020)
17
Over-the-Top Applications - https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29145/over-the-top-application-ott (Accessed on March 1, 2021)
Page 8 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

5. Net Neutrality Debate in India: Here Are All the arguments You Need to Know:
https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/net-neutrality-in-india-licensing-to-zero-ratings-its-a-
complicated-debate/ (Accessed on August 5, 2020)
6. Pros and Cons of Net Neutrality: https://psu.pb.unizin.org/ist110/chapter/9-1-pros-and-cons-of-net-
neutrality/ (Accessed on August 5, 2020)

Page 9 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

Exhibit 1
Penetration of Internet across the World, as Percentage of Population in 2017

Source: Worldwide Internet Penetration (ITU, 2017)

Exhibit 1a
Free Basics

Free Basics, earlier launched as Internet.org, was projected as a CSR initiative by Facebook. The app as well as web
platform offered access to more than 250 services and was available in 19 countries around the globe, including
India. Countries with the scheme were spread across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The platform offered
applications such as BabyCenter (for expert parenting advice), health, and basic education.

The following figure highlights the availability of Free Basics around the world, as of May 2018.

Source: For more information, please refer to:

https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/facebook-rebrands-internet-org-now-calls-it-free-basics-3671895.html (Accessed on January
21, 2021)
https://info.internet.org/en/press/ (Accessed on January 21, 2021)

Page 10 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

Exhibit 2
TRAI’s Consultation Paper on Differential Pricing for Data Services: Comments and
Counter Comments

Total 2.4 million comments received, with distribution as follows:

- 1.35 million from @supportfreebasics.in

o These responses supported Free Basics. The comments came with mobile numbers but without names.

- 0.544 million from @facebookmail.com

o Most of these were template responses in support of a specific product Free Basics.
o One response out of this addressed the questions raised in the consultation paper.
o Most of these responses supported Free Basics, with few responses not supporting it.

- 0.484 million – from Forums such as ‘Save the Internet’. Most of the responses were in template form
addressing the questions raised in the Consultation paper.
- Other comments
o From Organizations/Institutions – 23 (list is available at
https://trai.gov.in/Comments_Data/List_Organisations.pdf )
o Individual Comments – 5842

The initial consultation process was followed by the invitation for counter comments. Twenty-five counter
comments were received. These counter comments included responses from individuals and organizations.

Source: Detailed information (along with all the submissions and counter comments) is available at:
https://www.trai.gov.in/consultation-paper-differential-pricing-data-services (Accessed on January 21, 2021)
https://www.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/201601090922527372065Comments_data_services.pdf (Accessed on January 21, 2021)

Page 11 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

Exhibit 3
Common Zero-Rated Services in Europe

Source: Zero-rating practices in broadband markets, European Commission, 2017 (Report:

https://ec.europa.eu/competition/publications/reports/kd0217687enn.pdf ) Accessed on January 21, 2021

Page 12 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

Exhibit 4
Advertisement Released by Facebook on January 7, 2016, in Support of Free Basics

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mark-zuckerberg-ko-gussa-kyon-aata-hai-prabhakar-mundkur/ - The article includes advertorial that

appeared in Times of India on January 7, 2016 – accessed on March 1, 2021

Page 13 of 14
The Question of Net Neutrality

Exhibit 5
Deep Packet Inspection

Deep packet inspection is a technology by which almost every bit of data in the internet packet can be inspected.
When an application on a networked system (say system A) wants to communicate with its counterpart on another
system (say system B) on the internet, a series of network activities ensues. The network stack (i.e. the TCP/IP
stack) in system A adds the headers of various layers (like the TCP port number, IP address, and MAC address) to
the network packet and sends it to the network router. The network router inspects the IP header, and based on
the destination IP address identifies the next best hop; and ultimately, the network of routers in the internet
delivers the packet to the destination network. On reaching system B, the network stack on system B inspects the
packet to identify the application to which the packet has to be delivered (depending on the port number) and
delivers it to the relevant application stack. In this journey of the packet, there are firewalls and deep packet
inspection software that can inspect the content. The deep packet inspection software, for example, can inspect
the TCP header of the packet and block the packet if it is from suspected malicious software. However, the same
technology can also be a tool for damaging purposes.

To find out more on DPI and the implications of implementing DPI, you can refer to the following links:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-04/27/how-deep-packet-inspection-works (Accessed on August 6, 2020)

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249137/what_is_deep_packet_inspection_.html (Accessed on August 6, 2020)

Page 14 of 14