A digital economy can become a reality only if telecom firms make adequate investments to augment their existing networks to cater to the explosion of data traffic, and net neutrality enables that. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/MintTimothy Wu, the Columbia University visionary who coined the term net neutrality, may not have imagined the contentious debates that would rage over the concept a decade later, especially in India. That services on the internet must be equally accessible to all, and accessible at the same speed and cost. Bracketed as price and non-price based discriminatory measures, they are regarded as inviolable by proponents of “pure” net neutrality. Net neutrality is critical precisely because its absence means that a new start-up would be at a disadvantage vis a vis an established player.

Source: Mint November 28, 2017 21:00 UTC