Trai’s net neutrality stand comes as relief for most start-ups

For many in the start-up ecosystem, yesterday’s ruling by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on differential pricing came more as a relief than anything else. Many had feared they might have to pay a premium to stay relevant had the regulator not taken a clear stand on net neutrality.

On Monday, Trai put to rest the controversy of differential pricing, imposing a heavy penalty on anybody opting for differential pricing. “No service provider shall offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content,” the telecom regulator said in its decision yesterday, which will come into effect immediately.

Differential pricing means charging of different tariffs by a service provider for data services based on the content accessed, transmitted or received by the consumer.

Start-ups, including major e-commerce players such as Zomato, Paytm and Snapdeal, have been opposed to differential pricing as they were apprehensive about their business getting affected. Their fear was that the companies with tie ups with particular telecom operators would be given preference, hurting others’ business in the process.

Flipkart had earlier wanted to tie up with Bharti for Airtel Zero scheme and later withdrew after online backlash.

E-commerce players have been batting for net neutrality because smaller start-ups do not have the ability to access huge funds to be on the faster lanes on internet in case differential pricing came about, said Nilotpal Chakravarti, associate vice president of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

Last month, employees of nearly 700 start-ups including Zomato, Cleartrip, Paytm had petitioned to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to defend net neutrality, which they define as access to content on internet without any discrimination.

“We urge you to ensure that the recently announced initiative, Start-Up India, addresses the concern of net neutrality, with clearly defined policies and firm rules,” the letter said.

It said the open nature of the internet allows every individual, whether online or likely to get connected, in its current form.

“Not only us, even some of the bigger startups would have had difficulty getting preferred services as paying a premium is a costly affair. We would be left at the mercy of telecom operators. We app developers have anyway to deal with funds crunch and other problems, differential pricing would have been extremely bad for business,” said Ashwin Meshram, co-founder of ONE Rewardz, a mobile based customer engagement solution for retailers and brands.

Post-verdict Deepinder Goyal co-founder Zomato had tweeted, “Hats off to the TRAI for ruling in favour of a free and open internet. On that note, is #TRAIFan an official hashtag yet? #NetNeutrality”.

Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal, had this to say on Twitter, “Great to see TRAI backing #NetNeutrality! Let’s keep the Internet free and independent.”

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