Reliance Jio, the telecom service provider owned by Reliance Industries, appears to have a different view on internet apps that offer voice services. While most telcos want a level playing field for VoIP service providers like Skype and Viber and want these to be brought under a licensing regime in addition to levying additional fee,
Reliance Jio is in favour of "letting market forces take care of this". The telco, however, suggests some regulation in terms of security requirements.
In its comments on Trai's net neutrality consultation paper, Reliance Jio says that it supports an appropriate regulatory framework for OTT (Over-the-top) services for voice, video call and messaging services which may not include licensing and just be limited to a small entry fee. It proposes that the government could mandate OTT service providers like WhatsApp, Viber and Skype to put their servers in India and comply with other security guidelines that are applicable to telcos. This will make interception of messages easy for the government, it argues.
Jio clarifies that it's not in favour of any commercial charge on OTT players. It says that the impact of OTTs on traditional revenue stream of telcos is not of much importance in a competitive market and revenue streams will align themselves going forward. It even admits that OTT players are responsible for increase in telcos' data revenues and market forces will take care of revenue imbalances.
Reliance Jio's stand is very different from that taken by the likes of Airtel which has even suggested levying of a charge on OTT players for using the telcos' network as the latter make large investments in setting and maintaining the networks. Even Vodafone and Idea have supported Airtel and made the same suggestion saying that data charges for voice calling apps should be higher.
Reliance Jio is soon expected to commence its operations focusing mainly on 4G LTE data services and is expected dot bundle content and services apps with its data plans. This may be a reason why its position on the issue is different than that of the others.
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