Coming Soon: Regulation Raj of the Data Era
If all goes well for India’s telcos, you could soon be locked out of your favourite websites/apps. Yes, you read the line right. Soon, telecom companies, our Internet Service Providers (ISPs) could dictate what we can and cannot access via the internet.
Today, we pay for the data plan of our choice and access what we need at free will. Unfortunately, for us, the telecom giants feel cheated. They have paid licence fees, followed regulatory norms and set up the infrastructure to provide us with the connectivity we enjoy today. We, the consumers, have gone and pledged our allegiance to apps and what not, that piggy back their services on their network and often eat into their revenue streams. So they are crying foul and TRAI (Telecom Regularity Authority of India), the referee in this matter, is obliged to take note.
In reality, India has been a huge market for every telecom company. The market has grown from zero to 800 plus million mobile phones in the past decade or so and all the service providers have been making money. The catch here is that they concentrated on voice calling. While they were busy counting money, others innovated. The likes of WhatsApp, Skype etc happened. Now, the consumers can message, call and video chat without actually tapping into the ISP’s services, except for data connectivity. The telecom companies feel that they have been unfairly given a raw deal. They fail to fathom why these new companies, that are not regulated, do not pay any fees and who have no ownership of the bandwidth they use, should continue to enjoy a free run. Many of them have millions of users and are valued in billions. The telecom companies want their share of this pie and their solution is ‘differential tariff’ though which they will charge differently for usage of different sites / apps.
This means that we, the consumers could end up paying more for using the same amount of data, depending on what we access. It would be similar to viewing TV channels; you get what you pay for. This is in direct conflict with Net Neutrality, according to which ISPs and governments should treat all data on the internet equally. There should be no discrimination or differential charging based on user, content, site, platform, application, type of equipment or mode of communication. The whole world is following this protocol and today, India is at the verge of deciding whether there is any merit in abandoning it.
Moreover, there should be no reason to bail out telecom companies in this manner. First of all, they are not going to become loss making just because of what services other companies provide via the internet. There may be a dip in margins and that is because of ill advised business strategy on the part of the telecom majors. They did not innovate and keep up with the changing times. Besides, for all the fuss that is being made, they are still custodians (temporarily, as long as they have the license) of the connectivity and are still charging for it. If profit margins have fallen, end consumers should not be penalised for it.
TRAI has published a Consultation Paper on the subject on 27 Mar 2015. It has invited comments from stake holders. One can email them at advqos@trai.gov.in and present one’s case. The deadline is, Friday, 24 Apr 2015. Alternatively one can sign a petition, in favour of maintaining net neutrality, in India, at, https://www.change.org/p/rsprasad-trai-don-t-allow-differential-pricing-of-services-let-consumers-choose-how-they-want-to-use-internet-netneutrality . We can still hope to enjoy using the internet, as we do today, in the months to come, but there is urgent need to act to save our rights. Let’s do our bit, before it’s too late.
