Internet is the most important resource for current generations. It is like freedom. Few days ago, an administrative officer from some less known district of Bihar tweeted about the issues he was facing and he could reach thousands of people who could support him. His voice was heard only because of the liberty of internet.
Could Narendra Modi have made his brand without internet and social media?
Could the Jan Lokpal movement have take place without the existence of social media?
And many such everyday happenings of public importance that get the attention due to social media, can they spread so effectively without internet?
Internet has positively affected our lives in past two decades, but the freedom of internet is endangered in India.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) is considering to end Net Neutrality in India. In simple terms, Net Neutrality allows you to use internet, all websites, all web pages, all apps that use internet, at an equal cost or equally in general.
Net Neutrality is like “Freedom Of Internet”.
In recent years, Over The Top(OTT) content platforms have emerged as a big competition to the traditional telecommunication service providers. While most of the OTT services and apps like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. use internet, which is provided to users by telecom companies like Airtel, Vodafone, Idea etc in india. The telecom companies think that the increased use of OTT services have affected their revenue and thus they believe that they are eligible to get a share of revenue from a service that is negatively affecting their own revenue. To ensure this, end to net neutrality is being considered.
If Net Neutrality ends, users might have to pay extra charges for using services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp etc., this will be like we pay extra for some channel packs above our base pack in the DTH plan or we pay extra for some value added service on our talk plans.
The other side of this issue is that ending Net Neutrality will finish the liberty of internet. Many nations have accepted internet as an essential service and putting restrictions on essential services can be illogical in most of the cases.
nternet is the biggest system to spread knowledge at the lowest cost. We see that many things which practically look expensive offline, are free online. Just imagine the time when there was no WikiPedia and if there was a resource consisting of information that WikiPedia has, what should have been the cost of it?
But internet has given access to tons of information and knowledge and that too for free. Do we want to end all this?
There have to be certains steps taken by all of us
