Net Neutrality may curb calling from Viber, Whatsapp, Skype

Echoing widespread sentiment, the NGO attacked the recommendations of an internal Department of Telecom Committee that said that calls between WhatsApp users and others should be controlled to protect the margins of telecom companies.

As a part of this report, the panel has suggested regulating local and national calls over VoIP apps such as WhatsApp and Skype.

Again, to run these OTT services like voice calls and messaging, which are dependent on the data network, the networks have to be robust and needs upgradation in regular intervals as and when the customer base grows.

The committee was set up on January 19, to examine Net Neutrality on providing Over-the-Top (OTT) services by telecom service providers and internet providers (TSPs/ISPs) in the absence of consensus among stakeholders.

The new report, prepared by the Department of Telecom (DoT), says net neutrality must be protected and that “content and application providers can not be permitted to act as gatekeepers”.

Now the zero rating platforms will be treated on clearance and case-by-case basis that are sought from Trai, the telecom regulator. What I said in Parliament is that the Narendra Modi-government is committed towards providing non-discriminatory interNet access to all the citizens.

Mr. Umashankar said the recommendation was given only to regulate domestic Internet telephony as they were in direct competition with services that telecos offered.

The social networking website in May threw open participation in the program to websites that met its technical specifications for running on basic phones, were data efficient and let users explore the entire Internet.

The committee did not recommend any controls for the fast-mushrooming internet applications that are proliferating the online mobile world.

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came to India in February last year and launched Internet.org in partnership with telco Reliance Communications (RCOM), it was billed as an effort to bridge the digital divide by giving poor people free access to a selection of education, health, and media apps, including Facebook. “The timing for this is apt, taking into consideration the exponential growth of content and applications on the Internet”. It says that traffic management by telecom and internet service providers should be transparent and “improper (paid or otherwise) prioritization may not be permitted.”, states the news report by the financial daily. “The measures to ensure compliance of security related requirements from OTT service providers need to be worked out through inter-ministerial consultations”, the report added. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is also expected to submit its recommendations on net neutrality soon. This means that OTT apps that use voice calling locally would have to go by the same rules as mobile network companies. But in the same breath, the report proposes to exempt the global calling facilities offered by the OTT services.

He said the report was prepared by a panel of officers which he himself had formed to “study the entire gamut of net neutrality”. “Collaborations between TSPs and content providers that enable such gate-keeping role to be played by any entity should be actively discouraged”, it said.