First-order effects

• IAMAI's upcoming report becomes a contested document: if the association's anti-zero-rating language is watered down under member pressure, its position loses independence; if it holds firm, the rift between the trade body and Google and Facebook goes public.
• Google's lobbying directly shields its emerging-market zero-rating plans from being framed as a net-neutrality violation by India's own internet industry association.

Second-order effects

• A joint Google–Facebook front raises the cost for smaller IAMAI members to dissent, since opposing the two largest ad-funded platforms inside a trade association carries real consequences.
• The same two companies would within two years publicly champion net neutrality in the US, joining the July 12 "day of action" against the FCC's rule changes — a market-dependent posture competitors and advocates can hold against them.

Third-order effects

• If platforms respond to hostile policy environments by influencing industry bodies rather than engaging regulators openly, the burden of adjudicating shifts to official institutions — a pattern India's antitrust authority later embodied when it ruled against Google on Android abuse, a ruling Google disputed in filings.
• Zero-rating hardens into a structural wedge issue: 'net neutrality' comes to mean opposite things in different markets depending on whether paid-data programs are the growth engine, forcing regulators worldwide to define the line themselves.