The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), and industry body which represents some of the largest Internet companies in India, submitted a response to the Department of Telecom committee's paper on Net Neutrality, this time, "clearly and unambiguously" opposing "zero-rated plans of any type." The submission, a copy of which is with MediaNama, clearly takes a stand against Zero Rating, though it is a rather short statement (127 words): 4. Zero Rating IAMAI does not support any plans that violate the principles of net neutrality, especially, paid or unpaid prioritisation or other discriminatory practices. These plans will ultimately harm Internet content and service providers by limiting competition among them, and, by extension, limit consumers’ choice. Such plans will allow the operators, if given control of which apps/services to push to consumers, to discriminate and privilege certain web services over others, and throttle innovation. This will tantamount to illegitimate network management techniques and discrimination that will lead to fragmentation of the Internet. The Committee’s present proposal for regulatory compliance on the Zero Rating services will not be adequate to examine or scrutinize any violations of such plans and is likely to allow contraventions through back door entry. This stand has been taken despite strong opposition from Facebook and Google (and confusion from STAR India), and is completely opposite to the stand that the IAMAI had suggested in the 9th August 2015 draft of its response. That response, around one and a half pages (715 words, over 5 times longer than…
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