On Net Neutrality - Part 2

This is in continuation with my earlier post. First of all I am happy to report that Mr. Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO of Airtel (South Asia) has put out a clarification which in many ways echoes what I had written earlier.

Further I feel that we seem to be hearing only apocalyptic and hysterical views on net neutrality. Those supporting net neutrality have a good point to make. However they are not talking about the other side of the coin - how to compensate the huge investments made by companies, issues of security etc. As an added example look at Alok Kejriwal's post in today's Economic Times. He gives advice, talks about why net neutrality is needed. It would have been nice had he elaborated further on his advice. The TRAI chief has come out with a statement where he advises saner discussion.

So I am writing this post to talk about a few steps which can be done in this direction.

1. The government can reduce the price of spectrum or increase the quantum of spectrum available for telcos. This can take away the argument about bandwidth-intensive free applications hogging bandwidth and also about the need for returns of huge spectrum-related investments. However given the government's stand today the possibility of the former happening. However the government can surely look at increasing the quantum of spectrum available.
2. Telcos can look at launching this product first for in-house customers. For example make accessing customer service portal free. Then this can be extended to other companies for their premier customers (only). For example,  banks have high net worth (HNI) and private banking customers. Plus they have a clientele (like Premiere Banking for ICICI Bank) where the customer is not a private banking customer but puts in money above a certain quantum every month. Amazon and Flipkart offer some additional services to customers who pay a membership fee. These companies can extend services which consume bandwidth to these customers using the toll-free data (TFD) platform.
3. Gopal Vittal has clarified that airtel stands and will continue to stand for net neutrality. However, now I will take an extreme case now. Taking a worst case scenario in the future, if net neutrality is breached on the basis of better speed for extra payments - the government can always put in a minimum threshold of speed whereby the slowest speed must be equal to or better than the average speed available where no extra payment is made.

Any further thoughts are welcomed!