The country's position on net neutrality - which
ensures that all content providers on the Web are treated equally
by Internet service providers (ISPs) - remains unchanged despite
recent developments in the United States.
The Infocommunications Media Development Authority
(IMDA), which regulates Internet policy here, told The Straits
Times on Friday (Dec 15) that there are no plans to revise its take
on the matter even as regulators in the US voted on Thursday to
repeal net neutrality rules which were implemented in 2015.
Net neutrality dictates that ISPs should not charge
users extra costs to access specific online content, nor slow down
access to sites which take up too much bandwidth. This leads to a
free and open Internet where users are granted equal rights and
access to online content.
The authorities first took its stance on net neutrality
in 2011, when the-then Info-communications Development Authority of
Singapore released a white paper detailing its policy.
"Since the formalisation of the net neutrality policy,
IMDA has been monitoring international development, including US
and domestic market practices, as well as actively engaging the
stakeholders in Singapore," said an IMDA spokesman.
"Currently, there is no need to revise our policy
approach and we have not found any pattern to suggest that ISPs are
operating in breach of this policy."
Singapore's current net neutrality policy forbids ISPs
from blocking "legitimate Internet content", according to the white
paper.
They also cannot implement practices which render
content "effectively inaccessible or unusable".
This means that while ISPs can still throttle Internet
traffic, they cannot do so to the extent that users are practically
unable to access websites or the Internet. However, there is no
definition of what constitutes "unusable" connectivity.
ISPs here are also allowed to offer specialised or
customised plans to differentiate themselves from competition.
This lets ISPs, including telcos, offer what is known
as zero-rating plans, where certain services do not count towards,
for instance, a monthly data cap.
ST