Respected Shri A. Robert J. Ravi,

My name is Prashant Sreenivasan and I am a consumer-stakeholder and I have read the 118 page questionnaire and I would have replied to the 20 questions that you have asked had I enough time to research and reply to the same.

However, that seems unlikely due to the immense amount of time the research each question would require for a reasoned answer; time that currently I do not possess due to my end semester examinations. I believe that most consumers would like to have a say on this debate, but may not able answer all your questions because they do not have enough time to either read or answer your questions unlike the huge telecom companies and their law firms or they may not even be aware of the existence of this consultative paper

I would however like to share with you a very simple way to understand a consumer's perspective on the concept of Net Neutrality and OTT services through the reasoned opinion of a noted personality by the name of John Oliver  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU)

Please do also note that the end result was that Net Neutrality laws were upheld in the United States of America. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXIIMYXFoM)

In light of the above, I hope you understand the fundamental idea that the internet is the most democratic and free system now available to every person in the world to access any information available. Keeping with this principle, no one should have the ability to dictate who can access the free information on the internet ( except the government under constitutionally valid provisions of law). Allowing telecom companies to charge the access to different services like facebook or google would allow them to choose the information the public can view. In that case, no person like me might have even been able access this consultative paper and even provide an opinion as it would not be what the Telecom companies would have wanted. It would be highly discriminative against every poor person who would not be able to access facebook even though facebook is free.

I do suggest that you have public poll with simple questions through social media and traditional media.

With regards to the telecom companies and their points of view, I would only like to point out that telecom companies like Airtel have a subscriber base of over 200 million Indian subscribers of whom each will have to spend atleast Rs. 250 per month to access 1 GB of 3G internet over and above any other amount for other services. To be clear that is 250 X 20 Crore i.e. Rs 5000 Crore minimum and they earn much more than that, in fact their revenue for 2013 - 2014 was Rs 857,461,000,000 i.e 85,746.1 Crore. But to be fair, their revenue includes their African operations and thus is from around 300 million subscribers. My only point here is that they are not by any  means struggling for money, in fact they even received a Rs. 1.26 Billion Dollars worth of Private equity investment from the Qatar Foundation this year for their brilliance.

I am happy to pay the telecom companies money to access the internet but I will not let them pick and choose the information I access by making it slower or faster based on the money I pay; I want the poor boy in the slum to be able to watch the videos of his favorite cricketers at the same speed as me whether I pay Rs.500 and he pays Rs. 20. It is the duty of telecom companies to provide us this basic service especially since they earn so much money from us.

The government should also fear such companies from being allowed to choose the information that its subscribers can access as such a power is not even given to the government unless it does so through constitutionally valid laws. The companies can choose to favour political candidates, promote the propaganda of their investors and corrupt the freedoms provided by the constitution of India.

In conclusion, please uphold the Net Neutrality restrictions and the foundation of the democratic internet in India.

Thanking you for your service to India and the internet.

Warm Regards,