University of Mumbai panel talks net neutrality

The Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai, organised a panel discussion on differential pricing. However, the discussion soon veered towards net neutrality with three out of four speakers giving their views on the benefits and pitfalls of the same.

Mike Godwin, who was associated with the Wikimedia Foundation, said that net neutrality was largely misunderstood by the people and telecom service providers would charge only for services over and above the package opted for by subscribers.

Prof Manjunath said the discussion was not valid while comparing it with other services, as telecom companies had aspects like bandwidth and infrastructure to look after while providing services such as email, social media, video calling and VoIP.

Mahesh Murthy, a vociferous advocate of net neutrality, said, “We need to think like first-world countries rather than having net neutrality being taken away by Facebook. The US has legislated against doing away with net neutrality and hence, it is now being forced down our throats.”

Speaking about various other services with differential pricing, Mr Neelakantan said that if the same was implemented for use of Internet, there was no harm in it.

Dr Kannamma Raman from the department concluded the discussion saying, “It is an ongoing topic and the aim was to create awareness about differential pricing and net neutrality. The students from the department got an insightful understanding of the topics as well as the issues that will affect them.”