New Delhi : The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has rejected the proposal of telecom companies, in which they sought the regulator to put in place a process to charge the Over-the-Top (OTT) messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Vibre, Skype, Hike etc…
Indian telecom companies have been quite vocal about their dislike for OTT services such as WhatsApp, Viber and the likes. Citing people related to the matter, the report says TRAI has decided not to initiate the process because it now believes that ‘operators can offset their losses through growth in data revenue’.
A TRAI official told the site, “One-third of the incremental revenue of the telecom industry is coming from data services itself. As far as the voice services are concerned, there is an upswing in the realisation rates. There is no proposal for a consultation paper (on regulating companies offering free messaging and calling services).”
The proposal has been rejected and “shelved” According to sources familiar to the issue as TRAI feels that “operators are able to offset their losses through growth in data revenue”, because the Volume of revenue growth due to increase in data usage by Smartphone users are greater than the volume of revenue loss due to drop in usage of SMS as declared by Cellular Operators Association India (COAI)
Earlier, Telecom companies in India proposed TRAI to initiate a process to make messaging services like Whatsapp, Viber, Line etc… to pay connectivity charges to telecom companies and share revenue with the government as well.” These services use data network to communicate between different numbers, offering free voice calls, free text and image sharing and more. TRAI also convened a meeting with owners of OTT messaging apps to understand their view point also in this issue before making a final decision.
