Telcos ask Trai to ignore open letter that backed net neutrality

Industry body COAI wants Trai to ignore an open letter from more than 100 Indian companies, saying the letter used “falsehoods” to gather support and signatures

NEW DELHI: The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) against a submission by the Save the Internet campaign in a consultation by the regulator on whether digital services -- such as instant messengers and streaming content providers -- should have a framework with the telecom services providers (TSPs).

COAI said the open letter is “propaganda activism based on fallacies and unfounded fear-mongering” (File Photo)

The letter by COAI, the industry body that has among its members Airtel, Jio and Vi, marks an intensifying battle between telecom firms and technology companies over a plan that digital rights activists say could affect the principle known as net neutrality, which seeks all digital resources to be accessible without any differentiation.

The regulator has begun a consultation on whether there should be a collaborative framework between TSPs, and what are known as over-the-top (OTT) services. As part of this, one of the ideas discussed is what COAI has called a “fair share charge” that operators of services such as WhatsApp may need to pay a TSP such as Jio.

In its latest letter to Trai on October 4, COAI accused Save The Internet of using “falsehood and misinformation” to gather support from Indian companies, and of “grossly misleading” internet companies and start-ups. This refers to a September 26 open letter by the advocacy collective against any network fees or licensing of online services, with at least 120 startup founders, including Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath and TrulyMadly’s Snehil Khanor as signatories.

Lt Gen Dr SP Kochhar (retd), the director general of COAI, asked TRAI not to consider the signatures as valid or credible since the open letter is “propaganda activism based on fallacies and unfounded fear-mongering”.

The Economic Times first reported this letter.

Nikhil Pahwa, one of the founders of Save The Internet and the person who put out the open letter on X, disagreed with how the COAI characterised it. “After reading my Twitter thread on how TSPs, in their submissions to TRAI, said that they wanted to charge OTT services a network usage fee, many founders asked if they could put together a letter to TRAI to counter TSPs’ submissions,” said Pahwa.

Many of these founders, had also signed similar letters in 2016 against Airtel’s zero-rating plan and Facebook’s Free Basics Programme.

Two questions raised by Trai in its consultation process are at the centre of this maelstrom: is there a need for a collaborative framework between OTT communication service providers and the licensed TSPs? And what could be the challenges to such a framework and would it affect net neutrality, consumer access and consumer choice?

COAI has said that it has not asked for a “network usage fee” but for a “fair share charge” which wouldn’t be levied on startups and smaller OTT players. This “fair share charge”, as per the COAI, would benefit startups and MSMEs as “low usage companies who lie below the threshold of usage capacity for being liable to pay the charge, will not be required to pay the same”.

COAI wants “large traffic generators” to pay towards infrastructure costs so that these “large global entities, who are profiting from India” bear the onus of improving network quality and outreach.

In its letter, COAI conceded that the issue of their proposed “fair share charge” has not been discussed in detail but said that there will be “no differentiation of costs or quality” based on types of content being accessed.

COAI has claimed that the “fair share charge” issue is completely separate from the net neutrality issue. But Pahwa and Prateek Waghre, policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), disagreed. Pahwa is a co-founder of IFF.

Pahwa said that the issue of network usage fee, which COAI has called “fair share charge”, is inextricably linked to net neutrality.

“All of these founders are paying hosting and storage fees. Charging them a network usage fee means charging them twice. They will be forced to go to individual TSPs to negotiate. And as we have seen with mobile value added services, TSPs often engage in rent-seeking behaviour,” Pahwa said.

“Any revenue sharing model between the telcos and specific internet services may lead to favourable treatment which can also translate into discriminatory treatment for players who don’t engage in such models. This will directly affect citizens’ choice and experience on the internet,” Waghre told HT.