ESSAY FOR SBI PO - NET NEUTRALITY

NET NEUTRALITY

As of 2015, India had no laws governing net neutrality and there have been violations of net neutrality principles by some service providers. While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) guidelines for the Unified Access Service license promote net neutrality, they are not enforced. The best way to explain network neutrality is as when designing a network: a public information network will end up being most useful if all content, sites, and platforms are treated equally. 

Net neutrality has shaped the internet in two fundamental ways.One, web users are free to connect to whatever website or service they want. ISPs do not bother with what kind of content is flowing from their servers. This has allowed the internet to grow into a truly global network and has allowed people to freely express themselves. But more importantly, net neutrality has enabled a level playing field on the internet. To start a website, you don't need lot of money or connections. Just host your website and you are good to go. If your service is good, it will find favour with web users. Unlike the cable TV where you have to forge alliances with cable connection providers to make sure that your channel reaches viewers, on internet you don't have to talk to ISPs to put your website online.This has led to creation Google, Facebook, Twitter and countless other services. All of these services had very humble beginnings. They started as a basic websites with modest resources. But they succeeded because net neutrality allowed web users to access these websites in an easy and unhindered way.

If there is no net neutrality, ISPs will have the power (and inclination) to shape internet traffic so that they can derive extra benefit from it. For example, several ISPs believe that they should be allowed to charge companies for services like YouTube and Netflix because these services consume more bandwidth compared to a normal website. Basically, these ISPs want a share in the money that YouTube or Netflix make.Without net neutrality, the internet as we know it will not exist. Instead of free access, there could be "package plans" for consumers. For example, if you pay Rs 500, you will only be able to access websites based in India. To access international websites, you may have to pay more. Or maybe there can be different connection speed for different type of content, depending on how much you are paying for the service and what "add-on package" you have bought.Lack of net neutrality, will also spell doom for innovation on the web. It is possible that ISPs will charge web companies to enable faster access to their websites. Those who don't pay may see that their websites will open slowly. This means bigger companies like Google will be able to pay more to make access to Youtube or Google+ faster for web users but a startup that wants to create a different and better video hosting site may not be able to do that. Instead of an open and free internet, without net neutrality we are likely to get a web that has silos in it and to enter each silo, you will have to pay some "tax" to ISPs.

On the other hand, the arguments against such agreements is that a dominant social networking website with existing networks and more financial strength would be able to pay for faster access compared to an emerging social networking website. This would operate as a barrier to expansion and innovation by the emerging company. On the other hand, a pro-competitive justification would be that such an exclusive agreement would permit the companies to make greater investment in newer technology and in advertising thus shifting the burden of their costs to the consumers. Even though the Competition Act doesn’t require the market power of any one of the companies to be proved for an exclusive agreement, it is usually a rough indicator of the possible “appreciable adverse effect on competition” caused by an agreement to both the companies and to the customers.