TRAI’s Net Neutrality Views By October End; OTT Consultation Soon

Telecom regulator TRAI will release its views on net neutrality by October-end and also start consultation on residual issues around over-the-top (OTT) applications soon, its chairman RS Sharma said.

TRAI has already concluded open house discussions around the controversial issue of net neutrality and is in the process of drafting recommendations.

Net neutrality calls for access to internet content without any discrimination in data speed and cost, and telecom operators and internet firms have been at loggerheads over various aspects of the contentious issue.

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The TRAI chief further said the regulator is preparing a consultation paper on “residual issues” with regard to OTT players like WhatsApp, Skype, Hike, among others.

In March 2015, TRAI had initiated a discussion to analyse the implications of OTT proliferation and recommend suitable changes in the regulatory framework, if required.

That paper had touched upon aspects like whether OTT players offering communication services (voice, messaging and video call services) through applications should be brought under the licensing regime, and also had thrown up issues around net-neutrality, differential pricing and traffic management practices.

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It had also sought stakeholders' views on whether the growth of OTT impacted the traditional revenue stream of telecom operators, and if increase in data revenues of service providers was sufficient to neutralise that impact.

Sharma said that over the last two years, the telecom sector had undergone a “lot of significant changes”, and data had assumed centrestage. “A lot of regulations have also come in between... the world has gone from voice to data. So now we will cull out the residual issues which are still relevant from that (earlier) paper and take it forward. We will take up issues like regulatory imbalance,” Sharma added.

The new OTT paper is under preparation and will be out hopefully in October, he added but did not comment on the specifics.

The “residual issues” could deal with the larger question around level-playing field between OTT offerings (like voice and messaging) and the services offered by licensed telecom service providers, an official familiar with the matter said. It may also look at issues around security practices such as data records and logs that need to be put in place for OTT players, the official added.

The term OTT refers to applications and services which are accessible over the internet and ride on operator networks offering internet access services, that is, social networks, search engines, video aggregation sites. Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Instagram and Hike are some examples of OTT services.