The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Broadband India Forum and the Asia Internet Coalition have opposed suggestions by telecom operators that over the top (OTT) services be licensed and regulated.
They argue that these constitute an application layer that rides on the bandwidth provided by the telcos. Times Internet, which owns OTT platform MX Player, and Sony Picture Networks, which operates SonyLiv, also backed this stand. Times Internet is part of the Times Group, which publishes The Economic Times.
“Identifying Rich Interaction Applications (RIAs) as comparable to telecom services is highly reductionist and unjustified,” IAMAI has said in its submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) “Moreover, digital applications are not available to those telecom subscribers who do not have access to the Internet.”
The regulator had issued its Regulatory Framework for Over The Top Communications Services discussion paper in November last year, its second on the subject since 2015, asking whether a regulatory framework was required to govern such entities.
On 10 January, ET reported that top telecom operators, including Reliance Jio Infocomm, and startups such as Paytm and ShareChat favour the lawful interception of messages on internet applications and services, saying it was critical for investigating criminal, antinational and antisocial activities. They also said OTT service providers should be licensed in their response to the discussion paper.
“The approach followed by the Trai consultation paper in characterising OTT services like ours must be revisited,” MX Player CEO Karan Bedi said. “OTT platforms and telecom service providers (TSPs) operate in fundamentally distinct markets, and the latter already benefits from the increased demand for data that OTT platforms generate.”
“Equating highly differentiated OTT platforms with TSPs would encourage ‘double dipping’ into the OTT space and unreasonably distort and restrict the market,” Bedi said. “We invite a wider consultation process by the TRAI in conjunction with other regulators of the digital economy.”
The Asia Internet Coalition said that while both OTT services and TSPs enable communication among individuals, it was important to look at the underlying technology used.
“A regulatory framework mainly concerns itself with addressing risks, especially risks of market failure and risks of harm to consumers,” it said. “In a situation where the risks posed by two kinds of services are entirely different, it would make little sense to attempt to regulate them in a similar way.”
The grouping, members of which include Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon, also pointed out that telecom service providers have access to a public resource, and exclusive rights to operate a network which comes with attendant privileges such as right of way.
“They also control the critical infrastructure governing access to internet, which has been recognised by India’s telecom policies as a basic public right,” it said.
Sony pointed out that OTT players were already governed by local laws in India.
“In light of the entire set of regulations governing the OTT platforms coupled with judicial interventions from time to time, there are sufficient checks and balances in place to ensure that content provided on such platforms are not in violation of law of the land,” it said in its submission.
The Broadband India Forum said areas like data protection and privacy along with restrictions on data transfer are already being monitored as per the provisions of the Information Technology Act and Sensitive Personal Data or Information (SPDI) rules and are likely to be revised by the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018.
“In this case, there is no rationale in imposing parallel restrictions on privacy and localisation as this may create an uneven regulatory regime for internet based services,” it said. “Similarly, traceability and law enforcement are already governed by the IT Act.”
The Internet Freedom Foundation has said licensing of online platforms and services would increase costs for small players and hurt innovators.
“This could create entry level barriers and also impair the ability of Indian businesses to use online applications and grow and reach more people,” it said.
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