The DoT has, recently amended the terms of UL(VNO) agreement, Cellular Mobile Telephone Service license agreement and Unified Access Service license agreement to include the regulatory framework on ‘Net Neutrality’. Pursuant to these amendments, the telecom licensees are not permitted to engage in discriminatory treatment of content, including any discrimination based on the sender or receiver or the user equipment. The licensees have been expressly prohibited from entering into any arrangement or agreement with any person that has the effect of discriminatory treatment of content. In the context of these restrictions, the DoT has prescribed an inclusive definition for ‘content’ to include all content, applications, services and any other data or end-point information that can be accessed or transmitted over the internet. Further, for the purposes of these restrictions, ‘discriminatory treatment’ has been defined to include blocking, degrading, slowing down or even grant of preferential speeds or treatment to any content. The amendments clarify that the aforesaid restrictions will not apply to ‘specialized services’ i.e. services other than internet access service that are optimized for specific content, protocols and user equipment wherein such optimization is necessary to meet the specific quality of service requirements.