In the last few days the protest against ‘Airtel Zero’ ,a new platform by Airtel, which violated the philosophy of net neutrality ,gained huge momentum. Many micro-blogging sites, stand up comedians & responsible netizens joined the crusade to protect the internet from the monopolistic telecom operators,who wanted to tame the internet for monetary gains.
But as a result of the huge backlash that Flipkart faced for partnering with ‘Bharti Airtel’ for exclusive bandwidth over other e-commerce websites,it has decided to null their partnership. Many Flipkart app users had also downvoted the app on playstores ,which is also considered a major reason behind divorce between ‘Airtel’ and ‘Flipkart’.
The following statement was released by Flipkart-
“We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet. Over the past few days, there has been a great amount of debate, both internally and externally, on the topic of zero rating, and we have a deeper understanding of the implications. Based on this, we have decided on the following:
– We will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero .
– We will be committing ourselves to the larger cause of Net Neutrality in India. We will be internally discussing over the next few days, the details of actions we will take to support the cause .
– We will be working towards ensuring that the spirit of net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.”
In the last few days the protest against ‘Airtel Zero’ ,a new platform by Airtel, which violated the philosophy of net neutrality ,gained huge momentum. Many micro-blogging sites, stand up comedians & responsible netizens joined the crusade to protect the internet from the monopolistic telecom operators,who wanted to tame the internet for monetary gains.
But as a result of the huge backlash that Flipkart faced for partnering with ‘Bharti Airtel’ for exclusive bandwidth over other e-commerce websites,it has decided to null their partnership. Many Flipkart app users had also downvoted the app on playstores ,which is also considered a major reason behind divorce between ‘Airtel’ and ‘Flipkart’.
The following statement was released by Flipkart-
“We at Flipkart have always strongly believed in the concept of net neutrality, for we exist because of the Internet. Over the past few days, there has been a great amount of debate, both internally and externally, on the topic of zero rating, and we have a deeper understanding of the implications. Based on this, we have decided on the following:
– We will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero .
– We will be committing ourselves to the larger cause of Net Neutrality in India. We will be internally discussing over the next few days, the details of actions we will take to support the cause .
– We will be working towards ensuring that the spirit of net neutrality is upheld and applied equally to all companies in India irrespective of the size or the service being offered and there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.”