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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has called out the big tech players for spreading misleading views on the legitimate demand for TSPs (Telecom service providers) seeking a usage charge from the OTT (over-the-top) players that ride on their networks. In a release, COAI said that big tech companies are propagating that revenues earned by the IPs (infrastructure providers) should be shared with the entities using it in the same proportion. COAI has called this an “outrageous suggestion”.
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The industry body took a simple analogy where it called the telecom networks “roadways” through which consumers travel via public transport and vehicles. In this analogy, OTT service providers are the buses. The passengers on the bus pay for the tickets to travel much like they pay to consume data for availing digital services. Vehicles also have to pay the toll tax for using roads which contributes to the maintenance and upkeeping of the roads.
COAI said, “The outrageous suggestion of roads paying to the vehicles for getting passengers on their network is unheard of. OTTs, though, are not paying anything to the TSPs presently for their network costs.”
In strong words, the industry body said, “Besides cannibalising the services of the telecom operators, OTTs consume humongous bandwidth, which stresses the telcos’ networks and necessitates their continuous and speedy upgradation and development.”
COAI talked about how the telcos are already overstretched because of the growing volume of fixed broadband and mobile traffic on their network. Thus, the telcos have to invest continuously in new technologies to upgrade their networks. This upgradation results in better quality services for consumers when they are on an OTT platform.
OTT Platforms Don’t Have to Contribute to the Govt’s Revenues and Need Not Maintain QoS
One of the points that COAI brought to the table was that the telcos had contributed around Rs 17,627 crore towards license fees and Rs 7073 crore towards SUC (spectrum usage charges) in FY22 alone. However, OTT players didn’t contribute anything despite offering similar services.
