The Department of Telecom has constituted an internal committee to formulate policy on net neutrality issue.

The committee will have six members headed by A K Bhargava, Member (Technology). The terms of reference include examining the pursuit of net neutrality from a public policy perspective, its advantages and disadvantages, to examine the economic impact on the telecom sector that arises from a regulated telecom service sector and an unregulated applications and content sectors, including over-the-top players and to propose overall policy in the light of recent developments.

This comes even as the TRAI has started a consultation process on the issue.

Bharti Airtel had recently announced that it will be implementing new tariff plans for net telephony services being offered by players such as Skype.

Airtel had received lot of flak for launching new tariff plans for Voice over Internet Protocol calls as many termed it being against the principles of network neutrality. The operator on the other hand had defended the move to charge an additional fee for net telephony on the ground that it had invested billions of dollars in rolling out network and, therefore, it found it unviable to let over the top players run services without a fee.

The telecom companies had written to TRAI saying that Internet telephony is a licensed service permitted only under ISP or Unified License granted under the Indian Telegraph Act.

“Hence, companies offering OTT voice services, without holding a telecom licence in India, would essentially violate and circumvent Indian telecom licensing provisions and provide services that are otherwise only permitted under a telecom license,” Rajan S Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said in the letter to TRAI.

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