Nearly 129 startup founders, including Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, PhonePe’s Sameer Nigam, Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath and Razopay’s Harshil Mathur , have urged Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for implementation of net neutrality in India. The letter sent by the founders also made point for strengthening of net neutrality principles, fixed by government in 2016.
This comes in response to telecom service providers Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, pressing demands that Over the top (OTT) services should pay them telecom charges due to the overall traffic generated on their platform.
The letter mentioned to PD Vaghela, chairman of TRAI and Akhilesh Kumar Trivedy, advisor in TRAI, wrote, “ In context of recent demands of the TSPs and its implications for the economy, we urge TRAI to further strengthen the principles in the 2016 regulations, rather than dilute it.”
However taking a dig at the proposal of telecom service providers, critics have said it could potentially dilute net neutrality principles and could drive out smaller industry players out of the market.
The collective response might be seen as a result from 2015 based movement under the banner of “Save the Internet”, which advocate the needs and causes of net neutrality.
Back in the day, people hugely inspired by the campaign urged TRAI to rule in favour of net neutrality. In 2016, TRAI issued guidelines that supported the principles of net neutrality.
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