New Delhi: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology has raised concerns over net neutrality, asserting that all internet users in the country must enjoy equal rights under consumer protection laws.
Panel chairman Nishikant Dubey said on Tuesday that it plans to question major digital and social media platforms, including Meta, X, Google and Amazon, to examine whether they were creating preferential access for certain categories of users, including post-paid subscribers and paying customers on online platforms.
“We have to look after 140 crore people. All
of them should get equal rights. Right of Equality. This is decided by the Constitution. Is net neutrality important? Net neutrality is important. All consumers who use the internet should get equal rights under Consumer Protection Rights,” the BJP MP told ANI after Tuesday’s meeting of the Parliamentary panel where members reviewed quality of service standards and equal internet access.
“For example, if you give some money to X, you get more freedom to write (character limit), and others get less freedom,” Dubey said, adding that this must be evaluated against India’s constitutional principles.
What Dubey referred to was that users who have a standard, free account on X are restricted to 280 characters per post, while paid subscriptions (X Premium and X Premium+) removes word limit and adds other features.
The Parliamentary panel is also looking into digital and telecom services.
“The government decides licensing conditions of the network… Maximum people are prepaid, 90 per cent of the consumers are prepaid, 10 per cent of the consumers are post-paid, some companies want to give more convenience to the post-paid and less to the prepaid… we have come to understand that, we have not concluded it yet,” Dubey said.