Anurag Thakur, IT standing committee head, bats for net neutrality

NEW DELHI: Anurag Thakur, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on information technology, has weighed in on the side of net neutrality, deeming that a customer should be free to surf the internet without any discrimination towards any website or service. "There should be independence for the customer in usage of the net once a data pack has been paid for," he told ET, adding that there "should not be a check to see if the person is visiting site ‘A’ or ‘B’ once he has paid the telecom operator for data".

Net neutrality — or the principle that internet service providers should give their customers equal access to all lawful websites and services — became a talking point in recent times after some service providers came out with schemes that either gave priority to, or, discriminated against certain websites and services.

And the regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai), has come out with a consultation paper seeking public opinion on 20 questions on mostly how the internet should be regulated. "I am glad that this debate has come up during this time, especially when the government is also going for digital governance in a big way," Thakur said. "It is important that these issues are thrashed out and a consensus opinion be taken on board," he said.

As chairman of the standing committee on IT, Thakur had, two or three months ago, asked the telecom department officials for the government’s position on net neutrality. "At that time officials had told us that they were awaiting guidelines issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and could only appear before the committee on this subject thereafter," he said. The committee then queried Trai on guidelines, and the regulator said it was yet to form an opinion on the issue.

"Now, with telcos having issued data packs which offer preferential surfing, the matter has come to a head and hopefully this discussion paper issued by Trai will result in some guidelines," Thakur said.