NEW DELHI: Senior faculty members of top educational institutions of the country, including IITs and IISc, have come out in support of the cause of net neutrality.
Around 50 faculty members from India’s top institutions have issued a joint statement countering arguments included in Trai’s consultation paper that focus on why network neutrality must be compromised or weakened. The statement substantiates the counter arguments with different examples to conclude that there are no sound technical or economic reasons to violate net neutrality in the country.
Members include Bhaskaran Raman, professor, Department of CSE, IIT Bombay, Jayant Haritsa, professor, Department of CSA, IISc Bangalore, and Amitabha Bagchi, associate professor, Department of CS&E, IIT Delhi.
The statement focuses on four technical aspects of digital networks, and urges the authority to strongly support net neutrality.
The statement firstly counters Trai’s argument that net neutrality must be violated to solve congestion in the network.
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It mentions that the argument is fundamentally flawed technically as congestion can effectively be addressed by looking only at the quantity of data, while preserving net neutrality. “For instance, it would be well within the principles of net neutrality to serve the first GB of a user’s data fast, and the second GB of data slower. The second GB can also be priced higher.”
The statement iterates it with an example of a post office that gets 90% postal mail from 10% of its users. It can either impose limits of quantity of mail, or price differentially based on amount of mail sent, or simply increase its capacity, it mentions. “What it cannot do is to pry open every letter and price differently based on the content. To do so would be absurd. Likewise, if a road network is facing congestion, it would be absurd to charge road tax based on the identity of who is using the road, or based on whether the commuter is going to a bank or to a grocery store next to the bank,” it adds.