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The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday (January 2, 2025) ruled against the second attempt of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce net neutrality, the concept that all traffic on the internet must be treated equally by telecom companies and internet service providers (ISPs).

The setback highlights India’s divergent path on the issue in the last decade and telecom companies’ more recent attempts to find some room within India’s net neutrality approach to extract payments from big technology platforms.

What is net neutrality and why does it matter?

Net neutrality appears straightforward, but the United States’ and India’s battles started — and were driven — by completely different motivations. U.S. tech companies such as Netflix had chafed at attempts by telcos and ISPs’ to extract payments from them to broaden the bandwidth they made available to their services to catch up with demand. Digital rights advocates aligned with the tech firms on the issue, fearing the broader consequences of internet providers being allowed to establish “fast lanes” and “slow lanes,” an abstraction of the fight that quickly gained momentum and resulted in the Obama administration’s first FCC ruling on the matter.

India’s experience has been different. In 2014, before Reliance Industries Limited’s Jio entered the market and made mobile data cheaper, Bharti Airtel Ltd attempted to impose higher data tariffs on online calls on apps like Viber (WhatsApp had not yet introduced calling), sparking a coordinated, but eventually widespread movement against the practice of discriminatory data pricing. Back then, Facebook entered the debate with a massive marketing budget to defend its Free Basics service, which aimed to provide some online services for users without a data plan. The discriminatory data pricing fight became one about zero rating, the specific practice of exempting certain data from fees.

A telco double dip attempt that threatens Net neutrality

The Net neutrality advocates won. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) respectively banned discriminatory data pricing in 2016 and made net neutrality a part of the Unified Licence (in 2018) which all telcos and ISPs must comply with. As a result, telcos have not been allowed for a decade to sell tariffs like WhatsApp-only packs, or slow down or speed up certain online services in comparison to others.

“The internet must remain a permissionless platform,” R.S. Sharma, who presided over the net neutrality debate as TRAI chairperson in the late 2010s said in a telephonic interview on Friday. “The basic issue is that there should be complete unbundling, unbundling in the sense that you cannot become a gatekeeper” of online data as a telecom operator or ISP, Dr. Sharma said.

In the U.S., the Obama era rules were rolled back by the FCC under President Trump in his first term, an effort spearheaded by then chairman Ajit Pai. Under the next Biden administration, the rules were reimposed by Mr. Pai’s successor, Jessica Rosenworcel.

The return of the Net neutrality debate in India

In the last two years, Indian telcos have advanced a demand that was not relevant in 2014 — when mobile internet traffic was negligible — but has always been front and centre in the U.S.: forcing large internet companies to pay up for the volume of traffic they occupy on internet providers’ networks. Telcos term this as the network usage fee, a demand that has alarmed net neutrality advocates.

Dr. Sharma argued that this was a “useless” debate. “Ultimately, they (telcos and ISPs) are selling bandwidth, and charging for the bandwidth. If they want, they can increase the price of the bandwidth, but they cannot increase the price of the bandwidth only for certain companies,” he said.

The Union government has not appeared so far to entertain the demand seriously, and a senior DoT official said that “no such proposal” was under consideration last May, months into the telcos’ campaign over the issue. On the other hand, the net neutrality advocates’ victories have not fructified completely. In the years after the concept was cemented into telecom licences in 2018, TRAI recommended the creation of a multi-stakeholder body to advise on the issue. In 2022, the Department of Telecommunications rejected the proposal, citing COVID-19 austerity measures.

Washington:

The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday it is investigating if the use of Russian and Chinese foreign satellite systems by U.S. mobile phones and other devices poses security threats.

The FCC has concerns U.S. handheld devices are receiving and processing Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals from satellites controlled by foreign adversaries in violation of commission rules.

The FCC is seeking answers from handset manufacturers Apple, Google, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and others that collectively cover over 90% of the U.S. smartphone marketplace.

The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“There is no established record of what security threats, if any, these signals carry and whether the manufacturers of handheld devices are processing these signals in violation of the Commission’s rules,” a FCC spokesperson said.

Representative Mike Gallagher, chair of the House Select China Committee, wrote FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel earlier this week raising concern about reports that U.S. cell phones were receiving and processing signals from Chinese and Russian satellites.

The FCC has only approved U.S. phones to receivers to receive and process signals from the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and only the European Galileo GNSS has been approved. Gallagher said U.S. devices are receiving signals from the PRC BeiDou and Russian GLONASS GNSS constellations.

“Current events in Eastern Europe (including significant Russian jamming and spoofing of GNSS signals) call into question the wisdom of accepting this workaround and suggest it is critical that the FCC enforce its rules against using unauthorized signals from foreign satellites,” Gallagher said.

Rosenworcel in 2018 raised concerns saying U.S. phones have chips designed to operate with global navigation satellite systems of other countries. “Many devices in the United States are already operating with foreign signals,” she said in 2018.

The FCC wants to know “whether their devices are in compliance with FCC rules and what vulnerabilities” may exist in how they process GNSS signals.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)