Report on Net Neutrality to Be out Soon: Here’s A Look at the Timeline to Know How It All Started

A confirmed statement was given by the Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on 27th June 2015, wherein he confirmed that that the government is expected to soon released their report containing all the details about the net neutrality. According to him the telecom department is also waiting for the report from TRA sectoral regulator. He further added that that they are awaiting the TRAI reports and this is the main reason by government has not been able to release its report pertaining to the neutrality issue. Earlier this month, a report has already been submitted to the telecom minister who highlights the details on the net neutrality issue that has been collected by the panel set by the business.

What is net neutrality? 

It means that there should be equal treatment that should be offered to all the internet traffic and the government should give any kind of priority to any entity or a person or even a company based on the amount of payment that have been making. This aspect is being called as a discriminatory factor. DoT has already appointed a 6 member committee in January to look into this issue. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India or the TRAI had also sent invitation to the stakeholders to present their opinion on the ongoing issue as net neutrality as well as the regulation of the OTT services like Skype and the WhatsApp.

According to the rumours the TRAI has already received more than 10 Lakhs feedbacks. During this time the TRAI chairman Rahul Khullar's tenure ended and a new head will be appointed for the regulatory. As if now, the telecom minister has not confirmed any details pertaining to this area. In the last couple of month a lot of noise has been about net neutrality and a lot of stir was already created by Airtel by their Zero marketing platform. Outrage was created in the market leading to many entities pulling out of this platform.
Timeline of the events

27th March 2015: 117 page documents were published by TRAI. This document was about the Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services. It also talked about the net neutrality.

6th April 2015: Airtel Zero, a new marketing platform was launched by Airtel.

9th April 2015: Flipkart app gets down voted due to tweet about the net neutrality by the company's representative.

11th April 2015: Save the internet video was released.

13th April 2015: Lakhs of support received by TRAI.

14th April 2015: Outrage forces Flipkart to pull out of program.

16th April 2015: Debate over neutrality takes the internet by storm

May 2015: Facebook comes up with open platform for the developers in India. While on one side people are eagerly waiting for the decisions of the government there are volunteer group called as the Savetheintert who have requested that in the absence of any solution from TRAI, telecom companies should be avoided from launching any new plans and services that will ignite the net neutrality issue.