Flipkart bats for Net neutrality, logs out of Airtel Zero deal

Girja Shankar Kaura

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 14

Amid massive public campaign supporting net neutrality, online retail giant Flipkart today pulled out of Airtel’s new platform that has been attacked for allowing users to access partner applications for free.

The Bangalore-based e-commerce company had joined Airtel Zero but withdrew after its application was down-voted on the app store and its CEO Sachin Bansal faced backlash on Twitter.

“We strongly believe in the concept of net neutrality and, after a lot of debate, have finally decided to walk away from the ongoing discussion with Airtel for the platform Zero,” an official statement issued by Flipkart said.

Airtel, too, came forward in support of net neutrality. The telecom operator said: “There have been some misconceptions about our toll-free data platform Airtel Zero. It is a not a tariff proposition but an open marketing platform. Flipkart’s decision to offer toll-free data service is consistent with ours. It is merely an open platform for content providers to provide toll-free data services.”

The company said the 

platform allowed all applications and content providers to offer  services on a toll-free basis to their customers who were Airtel subscribers. “Such customers whether on a data pack or not will be able to access these toll-free services free of charge,” it said.

Flipkart said it was committed to the larger cause of net neutrality in India. The company will have internal discussions over the next few days and contribute to support the cause. “We will ensure net neutrality is applied equally to all companies irrespective of the size or the services they offer,” it said.

The statement said: “We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet. Over the past few days, there has been a massive debate, both internally and externally, on the topic of zero rating, and we have a deeper understanding of the implications.”

Net neutrality means the government and Internet service providers should treat all data on the internet equally by not charging users, content, platform, site, application or mode of communication differentially and users should be able to access all websites at the same speed. 

The Department of Telecommunications has formed a six-member committee to review the issue. Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the team’s report would be presented by the second week of May "on the whole gamut of net neutrality objective, its benefits, advantages and limitations, including the regulatory and technical issues”.

“The entire process of going into the pros and cons of the issue will help the government take comprehensive decisions. That’s why we are doing it independent of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)," Prasad said.

In March, telecom regulator TRAI had released a paper inviting comments from users and companies on how Internet applications and over-the-top services should be regulated in the country. It has asked stakeholders to send suggestions by April 24 and counter-arguments need to be submitted by May 8.