Net neutrality: Over 1 million emails leave Trai in a spot

MUMBAI: It is going to be a tough few days for Trai with its officials having to read, analyze and collate what over 11 lakh Indians had to say about net neutrality. The 'savetheinternet' e-mail campaign, which was started around two weeks ago by a coalition of net neutrality supporters online, hit the one million mark on Thursday afternoon at 12.42pm. Trai had set April 24 as the deadline for netizens to make submissions on the consultation paper on the topic. Even as @bulletinbabu, the coalition's official Twitter handle, tweeted the milestone number: "Emails to TRAI: 1000029 (+55) via www.savetheinternet.in #SaveTheInternet. We have achieved #MillionMailMission!", its volunteers celebrated with a quick ice-cream break before getting back to work. "At some point, Trai is expected to put up the responses on its website for counter comments by May 8," said Kiran Jonnalagadda, who runs the savetheinternet.in and netneutrality.in websites with a team of volunteer/developers. "Our biggest fear is whether the e-mails (based on the template prepared by the coalition), would be considered as a single e-mail or one opinion," he said. The regulatory body has in the past invited comments and counters, uploaded all of them on its website, and came up with policies based on the consultation process. "Sometimes, they have held open houses to invite comments, but given the amount of interest, I don't know which of these processes they will adopt," said lawyer Apar Gupta, who helped the coalition frame the responses to questions posed by Trai in its paper on 'Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top Services'. The paper's wording and complicated questions had many worried that the regulator might allow internet service providers to charge netizens discriminatory prices based on the websites and services they use, thus putting an end to internet's open and equal access. TOI