What is net neutrality and its rules?

Net neutrality (also network neutrality, Internet neutrality, or net equality) means that each & every website should be treated same by providing necessary measures. ( To be simple, the internet which we are using right now). You can view any website, any number of times.

These have been raised into News due to FaceBook Internet.org, where Mark in the name of trying to help people to reach them to the internet. But actually it is the opposite of what net neutrality defines. Before this, some of the Service providers already has violated these net neutrality in some instances.

For example, have you seen this message of Unlimited Facebook/ WhatsApp for rs 1 for a whole night. This is what exactly dealing with net neutrality. What net neutrality suggest is to give the whole internet rather than specifying it to the particular website ( in this case Facebook / whatsApp).

You may think this is a Nice deal but here comes the background scam which will be done. you should pay much more extra for the remaining websites. This is the reason Service providers are violating this by showing attracting offers.

Net neutrality in layman terms means the data has to be treated equally and without any financial bias by the network providers.

If you want to read the fair side of the argument for net neutrality then I suggest checking out EFF website.

US is more neutral compared to other nations. Most of the liberal nations are likely to follow the similar rules to that of US. India as of now is yet to be liberal about net neutrality. And it has not yet taken any decision on this despite telecom companies pressurizing the society for spending more on network.

The companies such Facebook, IDEA cellular, Reliance and Airtel wish to give incentive the certain section of internet and want to charge higher for other section. This way the democratic nature of internet is likely to vanish and it could lead to biased network.

For example with FreeBasic plan of facebook they may give free access to youtube, wikipedia, facebook. However they may charge heavy on other parts of internet. This is against the neutrality of network. And this is one reason people around the world are against such plans.

Internet has to be neutral for all without any discrimination. This way people will have equal rights otherwise same socioeconomic limits will be imposed.

Net Neutrality is the term used to explain the underlying principle that all the Internet data needs to be treated equal. There should be no discrimination or differential charge based on the sites visited, platform used, application, location of the server or the equipment connected to access the Internet. Once you subscribe to a data plan, the ISP, or the telecom operator should not have any control or say on how and where you are using the data. You should be free to use it in whatever way you want to with any application and get connected through any device.

Net Neutrality was never heard in India till 2015. The issue surfaced her after AirTel made an announcement indicating its plans to charge the voice calls made from Instant Messenger services like Viber, WeChat and WhatsApp at a higher rate than the normal voice calls. Since these IMs work on data plans, it was clear that AirTel was planning to differentiating the usage of data plans. It was clearly against the principle of Net Neutrality. After widespread protests, AirTel had to step back.

TRAI- Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has invited for the opinions of the consumers and based on the feedback, further decision on the subject will be taken.
India has no legal documentation or procedure to prevent Net Neutrality violations. Though TRAI guidelines on Unified Access Service License promote the concept of Net Neutrality, there are no laws to enforce it.