​It's 1.5 lakh net neutralists vs Airtel, Vodafone, Idea

Many instances in the past have proved that young India loves to raise the red flag. And when it’s about an issue, which is severely harmful for the interest of many, it’s obvious that people will come forward. With Indian Internet users voicing their support for net neutrality in the country, the telecom regulator has received more than 1.5 lakh emails over the weekend .

In the last few hours, at nearly 10 emails a minute, the pace of such emails have touched record speed flooding the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's inbox.

"This is completely unprecedented. We thought we'll get about 15,000 emails in 10 days," Kiran Jonnalagadda, one of people behind the campaign told the ET. Earlier, the telecom regulator had sought views from the public on regulating 'over the top' service providers like Whatsapp and Skype.

The e-mail campaign to protect net neutrality began on Saturday around 3 pm through Savetheinternet.in website. A video created by popular standup comedy group All India Bakchod (AIB) also pushed many users to sign up for the campaign.

The video was shared thousands of times within a short period on Facebook. Because of the unusually high number of shares, the social network mistook it for spam and took it off people's timelines. It was soon restored after many users complained.


Net neutrality, or the notion that Internet service providers must treat all traffic as equal, became a topic of heated discussion after TRAI floated a consultation paper on "Regulatory Framework for Over-the-Top (OTT) Services" seeking comments from stakeholders.

Last week, telecom provider Airtel launched Airtel Zero, a scheme through which companies can pay Airtel and have users browse their service free of data charges. The practice of allowing apps to be free of data charges to the consumer is called ‘zero rating’ in telecom parlance.

By paying to be on Airtel Zero, companies can make sure that their users get free access to their service, while smaller players are at a disadvantage. Airtel has said that zero rating does not violate net neutrality as it lowers the cost of access and it is "non-discriminatory".

Many startups are staunchly opposed to breaking net neutrality. "It creates a class system all over again, this time, for people with money," Sai Srinivas Kiran, CEO of Tewee, a hardware startup for video streaming told the financial daily.

Many politicians like Tathagata Satpathy, Derek O'Brien and Rajeev Chandrasekhar have also taken up the issue. In December 2014, Airtel had also tried to introduce a plan to charge Internet telephony companies like Skype and Whatsapp a higher tariff. However, the telecom operator withdrew the plan after public outrage.