NET NEUTRALITY- A LEGAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Net Neutrality is a principle of non-discrimination in the sense that all communications should be treated equally irrespective of content, application, service and sites. It also puts at rest all differentiation or discrimination with respect to speed, access and price over the internet. Net Neutrality, a term coined by Professor Tim Wu, has emerged as a network design principle. According to him, “the idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites and platforms equally, which allows the network to carry every form of information and support every kind of application”. This principle is synonymous to “equal and non-discriminatory access.” Thus, a practice is discriminatory when it restricts the users’ freedom to access through barring of speed, content, price or any other important element and creates a non-level playing field in the market. In this sense, net neutrality implies that providers of the internet charge the consumers once for internet access and then the consumer is free to access all types of content without any kind of discrimination or prioritization of a particular content. Thus, net neutrality is associated with absence of price discrimination both for suppliers of content and for the end consumers and creation of a tier-less market ensuring absence of favoritism towards or bias against a content provider. 

The polarizing debate over net neutrality raises a fundamental question - Why discuss net neutrality? Firstly, net neutrality affects people directly. One’s dependence over the internet has increased tremendously and it has begun to dominate ones’ daily lives. The internet would continue providing value to the users in the future if it can protect user choice and freedom of access. Secondly, anti-net neutrality proponents believe such neutrality is becoming difficult to sustain with the changing technology, increasing internet traffic and growing dependence and dominance of the internet. And therefore, net neutrality need not be bothered about. Thirdly, there are accusations of potential abuse of market by the limited number of service providers which could result in “gatekeeping” function by the providers of the internet. Thus, all these factors collectively compel a nuanced debate on net neutrality.