Airtel is shamelessly going ahead with its plans to charge separately for voice calls and has even announced a pack priced at Rs 75 for prepaid users. Data packages bought before December 24 won’t be subject to the change however. It has also added that cheap postpaid rates for the same will be revealed next.
The VoIP pack will offer customers 75MB data for 28 days, amounting to almost 250 minutes of calling. It translates to 1GB costing Rs 1024 instead of Rs 175 or Rs 249 on 2G or 3G networks, respectively. The roll-out is happening in the midst of the debate over whether it is fair for Airtel to be attaching special rates to calls made through Internet-based services like Skype or Viber.
Airtel has justified its move by claiming to have spent more than Rs 140000 crores on network infrastructure and over Rs 50000 crores in payments to the government. It has further stated that VoIP services mean bad business for itself, further explaining why it wishes to use an anti-net neutrality stand to throttle the competition if possible.
Although this is not a first in the world, if the government allows such practices to continue, who’s to stop any other operator from levying a separate fee for messaging through WhatsApp because it’s eating into their SMS revenue? As it is, all the top service providers in India increased their mobile Internet charges by up to 100 percent during this year itself.
Also see: Airtel charging a bomb for VoIP calls, what’s next, pay per website?
The TRAI’s (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) decision to disallow companies from imposing a fee in relation to Over the top (OTT) applications like Line, Viber and WhatsApp will have to be revisited if Airtel is permitted to charge separately for VoIP calls. Now everyone’s waiting with bated breath to see what the government will do about it.
Earlier today, Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, was reported to have promised that the concerned authorities would look into the issue and come up with a response. Let’s hope it amounts to a favorable one for the cause of net neutrality. What do you think about the new Airtel VoIP pack for Rs 75?