The government has reportedly redrafted the new Telecom Bill and is likely to table it in the Monsoon session of the Parliament. It’s understood that the telecom ministry will steer clear of dilution of powers of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and maintain the fine balance that exists between the government and the regulator. This instills confidence in investors and maintains fairplay in the market. The same needs to be done in the case of over-the-top (OTT) players, as the intent of the Bill is to bring them under some form of regulation. While the telecom minister has in the past said that he favours light-touch regulations, the telecom operators have been pushing for regulations like licensing and payment of statutory charges for OTTs, similar to what applies to them.
The OTTs have been opposing any regulation on the grounds that telecom services and the services provided by them are as different as chalk and cheese and therefore same service-same rules does not apply in their case. In the din of demands and protests, what has been forgotten is that OTTs are already governed by a set of guidelines and therefore do not need any further regulation. The Information Technology Act provides for intermediary guidelines, which govern platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, while the Digital Media Ethics guidelines regulate platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney-Hotstar, etc. From time to time, additions are made to these rules, the most recent being the formation of three grievance appellate committees by the government to look into users’ complaints against posts on social media platforms. Discussions for a similar fact-checking body are currently underway.
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Regulations are already in place for OTTs. The only issue which DoT wants to look into and has asked Trai to also examine is the scope for some kind of a level-play field between the telcos and the OTTs. Telcos have complained that while they pay licence fee, spectrum usage charges, and are bound by interception laws, the OTTs do not have any such obligation. Further, the latter earn revenues by riding on their networks and don’t pay anything to them. Objectively speaking, the grievance of telecom operators is not fair. OTTs do not use spectrum, which is public property, and hence are not required to pay any charge. A token licence fee can be charged, but for what purpose? A licence fee is charged from telecom operators for historical reasons—the state giving up its monopoly in the sector. Any form of licensing today will be seen as nothing but rent-seeking.
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The other grievance of telcos that OTTs do not pay anything to them despite using their networks is also patently wrong. Telecom operators today do not charge for voice, they charge for data. The data is used for accessing OTT platforms like Netflix or Twitter. So, if telcos say that 70% of the overall traffic flow on telecom networks is of data/video, then bulk of their revenues are also coming through OTT mediums. In that case, the latter should not be asked to pay any form of access charge to the telcos. The telcos and OTTs enter into deals whereby bundled services are marketed, leading to common billing and revenue share. If there are differences between the two sides, the marketplace is the right forum to fight out. The government should drop the clause relating to regulation of OTTs from the final draft Bill.
