The Telecom Commission has approved the TRAI's recommendations on Net Neutrality, reports the Economic times: these recommendations were specific to throttling and blocking of websites, and more traditional Net Neutrality issues, and will lead to the amendment of ISP and Telecom Operator licenses to include Net Neutrality provisions. Amendments have been recommended by the TRAI for all four access services licenses: Universal License, Universal Access Service License, ISP License, Cellular Mobile Telephony Service license. What this means is that any Net Neutrality violation will now be deemed to be a violation of Telecom Operator license conditions, and could lead to the cancellation of the license. This is the practical means of enforcing Net Neutrality, since passing a Net Neutrality Law, albeit a stronger measure, is far more complex and cumbersome. As per these recommendations, telecom operators may do reasonable traffic management, but not give preferential treatment to any service or type of service, except for some services or under some conditions. Some specialised services are excempt from non-discriminatory access restrictions, as well as critical IoT services (which will be defined by the Department of Telecommunications). Content Delivery Networks have been kept out of the ambit of these regulations, which is fine, since the task they perform is of optimisation of traffic between ISPs, and do not operate at "the last mile" of Internet access, which is between an ISP and an Internet user. These, combined with the differential pricing regulation which banned Zero Rating, gives India the strongest Net Neutrality…
