After banning Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel Zero, telecom regulator Trai on Thursday came out with a new consultation paper to look at ways to provide consumers free internet service within the ne
After banning Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel Zero, telecom regulator Trai on Thursday came out with a new consultation paper to look at ways to provide consumers free internet service within the net neutrality framework.
In February, Trai had barred telecom operators from offering discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content. This meant that the telecom firms will have to charge same price for data consumed, irrespective of website or app accessed by the consumer.
However, Trai said on Thursday that it got representations that there is a need to have some telecom operator agnostic platform which can facilitate app developer to promote their website by providing some incentive to user for making their website popular.
“Therefore, there is a need to enable smaller entrepreneurs to flourish without permitting gate keeping function in the hands of the telecom service providers and also to give the consumers more choices for accessing the internet,” said the telecom regulator.
It said that the model should facilitate the un-connected and under-connected consumer to become better connected and should not allow any telecom service provider or large company playing a gatekeeper or biased role.
As per the models proposed by Trai, through a telecom service provider agnostic platform consumers is directly paid for the data consumed in accessing the website “in the form of a recharge for data usage or for voice usage to the user.”
In another model, consumers are provide reward again through telecom service provider agnostic platform when they download certain application or have some activity on a particular website.
The last proposal of Trai is a something like a troll free model. “This model is also prevalent in many developed markets, allowing free access to certain websites and applications. This helps the businesses make their service easily accessible without impacting the mobile bill of the consumers,” said Trai. It said that in this model telecom operators does not act as a gatekeeper and plays a passive role.
“The platform owner has a business interest to allow any and every content provider making the model neutral. This model will work for mobile subscribers who have zero-balance as the subscribers are not being charged so they don’t need balance versus a reward model that requires an action before the reward thereby excluding the mobile users who have low or zero balance,” said Trai
