The price of freedom

With India’s largest e-retailer, Flipkart, deciding to opt out of telecom and internet service provider Airtel’s ‘Zero’ plan, and with Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad indicating that the Centre was against any violation of the principle of net neutrality, the storm created by the move may well die down. The ‘Airtel Zero’ plan was fashioned around allowing free access to the sites of some application providers, including that of Flipkart; this would have disincentivised access to sites of rival app-makers, including rival e-commerce websites, where such access would have attracted data charges. The huge public backlash against Flipkart may have forced the e-tailer to back off, but the issues raised by the move are serious, and merit careful consideration by the Centre of the issues involved. Should services such as WhatsApp, Google, Facebook, games and streaming video be regulated? Telcos, which are also the dominant internet access providers in India, want such ‘over the top’ (OTT) services to be regulated as they use the spectrum and connectivity infrastructure created by telcos to gain access to consumers and revenue, but do not pay telcos for riding on their data backbone. Also, should telcos be allowed to create a multiplicity of internets, with faster access to a few sites (which pay for the privilege) and degraded or blocked access to others which can’t, or won’t, pay?

Telcos say that with rising spectrum and infrastructure costs, OTT services which poach on the core business of telcos — voice and text services — will render their business unviable at current data costs. Therefore, OTTs should be regulated and should be charged licence fees. They also point out that since companies such as Google or Facebook earn enormous revenues thanks to the access provided by telcos, it is not unreasonable to ask them to share the costs for the creation and maintenance of infrastructure. In a country where universal access to the internet is still a distant dream, such a position does not appear to be unreasonable. For a ‘Digital India’ to happen, connectivity infrastructure has to be created, and services have to be provided at an affordable cost. Both aims are helped by having a financially viable telecom sector.

But then, any such move will have the unintended consequence of making telcos the gatekeepers to the internet. By creating areas of privileged access, they will fundamentally alter the democratic nature of the internet. The US, for instance, has declared broadband internet a utility, where such selective ‘fast laning’ will not be allowed. The internet has been a disruptive change agent precisely because of its lack of entry barriers, which have allowed ideas, thought and speech free play. The only fair solution would be one that protects this freedom while safeguarding the interests of the service providers, but to fashion such a remedy is easier said than done.

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