TRAI extends deadline for comments on neutrality to Jan 7

TRAI has extended the last date for sending in comments from December 30 to January 7 and January 14 is the new last date for counter comments, extended from January 7.

The deadline for comments on the paper was to end today.

The TRAI petition was sent by entrepreneurs from prominent startups such as Zomato, Paytm, TrulyMadly, GoQii, Mouthshut, Flipclass, Teesort, SVG Media and Tevis Learning, in response to TRAI’s consultation paper on differential pricing for data services.

TRAI said that it is looking to solve the issues “part-by-part” and based on the feedback received from various stakeholders it is aiming to come up with the final guidelines by early 2016 as the debate over the net neutrality is gathering steam.

Critics of Zuckerberg’s plan have said that the service is contrary to Net neutrality, the principle that Internet providers allow equal access to all online content, and it also has the potential to discourage innovation and competition in India by offering services for free that other companies must charge for.

The date has been extended at a time when social network Facebook has launched a massive campaign in support of its Free Basics Internet service, which has been dubbed in various quarters as violating the principle of net neutrality. Instead of recognizing the fact that Free Basics is opening up the whole internet, they continue to claim – falsely – that this will make the internet more like a walled garden. Zuckerberg has said that there aren’t any ads in the version of Facebook included in Free Basics.

The coalition has said that Facebook is misleading users and cautioned that the free service could be replete with advertising if and when it’s implemented. “What are the “basic” digital services Indians will access using their own air waves will be decided by a private corporation, and that too one based on foreign soil”.

Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for the “Airtel Zero” service along with Facebook’s Internet.org service.

“Compromising net neutrality, an important design principle of the internet, would invariably lead to deep consequences on people’s freedom to access and use information”.

The move drew criticism, since it offers free access only to select content, violating net neutrality that holds that telcos should not discriminate online data by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment or mode of communication.

The regulator till December 23 had received close to 5.7 lakh comments out of which over 5.5 lakh comments are through Facebook’s campaign.