Recently TRAI came up with its recommendation on Net Neutrality. It is an extension of its earlier tariff order dated Feb 8th, 2016 on differential pricing. In this note, I plan to explain the principle difference between the two approaches (current vs previous) and how it impacts the operator’s ability to innovate and monetize their investments.
TRAI’s Feb 8th Order
In simple terms, it prevents an operator from entering into any contractual agreement with a content provider for offering to the consumer a concessional data tariffs for accessing the content. In other words, the pricing for data should be same for accessing all types of content and an operator cannot offer expanded data packs to its consumer just for accessing NetFlix. However, an operator was free to offer differential tariffs for those content which are hosted on his own intranet – only available to his customer and not to his competitors.
