Subject: net-neutrality
From: Shant Manav
Date: 07-Apr-15 11:51 AM
To: advqos@trai.gov.in

Dear TRAI, 

I urge you on this matter to take side of the set of people, who would be most negatively affected if net-neutrality is not upheld - the people of India.

The analogy that best emanates the non-sensical attributes and fallacies in non-net-neutrality system, is to compare internet to household electricity. The electricity board charges its consumers on the basis of units consumed, irrespective of how the units be shared inside a house. And the consumers pays only for those total units consumed. Certainly, it will be the most ludicrous deed, if the board charges Samsung company to make electricity available to its fridges, TVs or other appliances in a colony. And the board's arguing that, "OTT ( in this case, Samsung, LG) etc are earning more money than them, without investing in infrastructure" would be very stupefying.

This thinking is regressive, especially when India is trying to push for  digitisation of the country, and also when in this world, competition and evolution is inevitable. There was telegram,newspaper, radio, telephone, television,internet SMS, and now whatsapp.,The telecom companies certainly has no rights to complain about the advent of a better technology, when they themselves made  the technology before them obsolete. SMS was inherently expensive and inflexible. Laws of nature dictates old to be replaced by new, history is witness. One should not cling on the old, this thinking if encouraged will bring society to a stagnation point. Therefore I urge TRAI to prevent such calamity by ensuring  that no bad economic policy comes in the way of technology development.

 This said, I like to express how not upholding net-neutrality will also destroy free and fair competition. Flipkart, amazon, uber, whatsapp  and other internet based services are best in what they do, and we the consumers are certainly benefitted by those services. This was possible because internet is a plain level field, where any new comer has an equal opportunity and freedom to make an impact. So now for a moment lets consider internet is not a level field, and digital bits are charged on the basis of its origin and destination, creator and application. This promptly crush all new competition in the form of startups, who because of their nature, certainly lack the monetary gain to afford internet . In other words, compulsory internet payment charges act as an unnecessary burden, that certainly hinder their growth. While the already established internet services, will gain monopoly by simply acquiring bandwidth using large sums of money. This is certainly illegal and in my case those who practice this should and certainly can be sued in court for illegal trade practices to diminish competition. 

All this being said, I like to congratulate TRAI for their recent successful spectrum auction which certainly bring benefits to the people of India, and because on those lines that I hope that TRAI upholds the spirit of innovation and Digital India by upholding net-neutrality, and urge the government be the representatives of the common man who chose them to power and does not chose to represent the interests of those 1 percenters of corporates and businesses who are only greedy and give less back to the community than they take. 

I will end this email stating that TRAI should bring about a framework which upholds net-neutrality with no compromise and clauses. The net-neutrality framework should state that "all bits are equal, and should not be charge on the basis of its origin and destination, usage, creator and application. The ISPs should not charge bandwidth intensive  applications ". If this is not implemented then I have no reason to believe that you TRAI  or the government represents the true interests of people of  India.