Government is looking at global best practices for regulating over-the-top (OTT) players.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has reportedly sent suggestions regarding regulations to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Department of Telecommunications. The two are still reviewing the suggestions in the light of regulations adopted worldwide. One of the sources said India may look South Korea, which had regularised OTTs last year.
For unsolicited commercial communication (UCC), TRAI has said the regulatory framework around OTTs comes under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
According to telecom services providers (TSPs), the regulatory disparities prevailing in the sector are impacting them adversely, leading to concerns over market fairness, national security and user privacy.
“Things are very dynamic today and our understanding is that OTT is a service which rides on application layer. TRAI can only regulate on carriageways. Since OTT runs on application layer TRAI cannot regulate on content,” said a source.
The official also mentioned that Indian TSPs are asking for revenue sharing model when it comes to OTT players because OTT services ride on the telecom infrastructure, but there is no revenue sharing model worldwide as such, right now.
Uneven playing field
According to Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), that represents major TSPs like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone-Idea, the absence of OTT regulation under the new Access Service authorisation perpetuates an uneven playing field.
“To address this, the government should enforce traceability and user privacy rules on all calling and messaging apps, as those platforms provide similar services using the Internet network,” it said.
Recently, COAI also slammed TRAI for not bringing OTT communication service providers under the ambit of the TRAI’s amendment of the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018 to strengthen consumer protection against UCC.
Financial penalties
The telecom industry representative said that while TSPs now face financial penalties for misreporting spam communications, there is no such regulations for the OTT players like WhatsApp or Telegram, who ride on their networks and broadcast spam messages or calls in a similar fashion.
As per the new amendment, TRAI has fixed fines starting at ₹2 lakh for the first violation, going up to ₹5 lakh for the second and ₹10 lakh for further offences. Repeated violations can also lead to suspension of telecom services.
“We believe that a more comprehensive approach is required to tackle the issue effectively. In the current digital landscape, both OTT communication providers and telemarketers have become major stakeholders in messaging, and thus, it would be critical to establish a regulatory framework to ensure accountability from all stakeholders in the ecosystem, including OTT platforms and telemarketers/principal entities,” S P Kochhar, Director General at COAI had said.
