Equality for none

THE US views itself as a bastion of freedom, as does the Internet. Indeed, so much of the Internet infrastructure and development is based in the US that it is easy to think of the information superhighway as American, even though it is not. The US Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) repeal of the Net neutrality regulations, put in place by the Obama administration in 2015, is a blow to the concept of treating all Internet traffic equally. Broadband and wireless service providers have triumphed.

The Trump administration has been handed a big victory by his appointee, FCC chairman Ajit Pai. The voting at the Republican-led FCC was 3-2, along party lines. Even as major Internet corporations hailed the decision, there has been much concern from liberal forums like the American Civil Liberties Union and public-oriented organisations like the New York Public Library. Pai maintains that the old rules were heavy handed whereas others believe in the need for government oversight. The laissez faire approach to Internet and the entities that use it failed dramatically when it allowed interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, among other issues. 

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has done well in resisting pressures from Facebook as well as Indian companies to allow measures and features that would have made content cheap, even free, provided it was restricted to what they wanted to push. The data superhighway is for all, and is a major source of information, entertainment and social interaction for everyone. Mobile phones and low tariffs have made the service accessible to the poor, too, which has proved to be a great enabler. Internet trends often flow from the West to the East. In this case, ideally, the reverse needs to happen. Net neutrality is a fundamental principle of the Internet, and should be protected at all cost. Hopefully, the government will endorse the TRAI’s stand on neutrality so that India stays a beacon of freedom, something where even a major US regulatory authority has failed.