Telecom companies have subtly threatened to punish customers by hiking data tariffs by six times if the government rules in favor of net neutrality and does not allow them to charge separately for services like WhatsApp that are stealing their voice and SMS revenues. These are the same entities who tried to beat OTT (over-the-top) services by reducing voice and text tariffs when Internet-based messenger apps started becoming popular.
Now mobile operators are pretending to be helpless and insisting that although they support net neutrality, they will have no choice but to increase data charges by almost sixfold because of the lack of a level playing field. What they’re not talking about is the opportunity they had to make it a level playing field by investing some of their profits to develop applications capable of competing against the likes of WhatsApp, Viber or Skype.
Bharti Airtel India MD Gopal Vittal, who is also the vice-chairman of COAI which was seen pledging its ‘love’ for net neutrality recently, feels the same rules must apply to all, according to TOI. Operators are supposed to meet certain service quality standards, intercept communications to help prevent terrorism and share their revenues with the government of India. So increasing data rates by six times more to fix the ‘inequality’ is supposed to be the only solution.
Also see: Next spectrum auction may lead to telecom operators hiking mobile tariffs in India
Many are concerned that Airtel will bully the TRAI and other concerned government bodies into passing a bill allowing service providers to demand extra money from customers (on top of normal data charges) for accessing certain apps or websites. It certainly looks like they’re trying and although some rival brands mostly remain silent about net neutrality, we can guess where they stand on the issue. Vittal says that many Indians won’t be able to access the Internet at the hiked prices.
Vittal also described concerns over Airtel Zero which lets companies pay for visibility a ‘baseless fear’. He said it merely allows people to ‘sample products’ but stayed away from explaining how a small app developer could compete against a big name that can afford to pay a customer’s toll fee in this manner. The COAI asked the TRAI to apply the same regulations to data-based voice services and regular cellular-based voice minutes on April 24.
April 24 was the day on which the TRAI stopped accepting feedback on its consultation paper for controlling Internet-based services. The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) thinks telecom companies should focus on pushing data to users and thus make up for declining SMS and voice earnings. Idea Cellular MD Himanshu Kapania, retorted that this would mean hikes in data tariffs by up to six times.