A few days before this, someone had messaged me about a seminar that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India was planning. A day before, I was forwarded an email about a discussion that the TRAI had planned, covering “Regulatory issues for online services” in Delhi.
The discussion was to have 3 focus areas, according to a notice on TRAI’s website:
Session 1: New Developments in OTT
Session 2: Impact of OTT on TSPs and their counter measures
Session 3: Legal and Regulatory framework for OTT
I had been writing about Net Neutrality concerns, in terms of what telecom operators had demanded, and wanted to figure out a way to attend the session. I ended up landing up at the PHD Chambers of Commerce, where the discussion was being held, and the TRAI folks at the counter thankfully allowed me in. I had attended several TRAI open house discussions in the past, and had been reporting on them for a few years, so they let me in because they knew me.
Regulation of OTT services was a part of the five point agenda pushed by the telecom lobbying group COAI in August, after the NDA government came to power in May.
That this was a telecom agenda was not surprising. However, for the TRAI to pick this up this quickly was worrying for me. I understood the concerns that they had, and had expected this: on an almost 14 hour layover at Dubai (the cheapest flight I could get), I had penned down my thoughts on what would happen after Whatsapp voice became a reality.
The open house began with an angry Rahul Khullar ranting about Telecom CEO’s speaking with him about the problems that OTT’s (Online apps) will cause for their business, saying that he wants nothing to do with this, and it’s better to have a seminar where these issues can be aired, rather than do a pre-consultation (and subsequently a consultation followed by a regulation).
(Was Rahul Khullar ever not angry? In the 8 years that I had been attending TRAI open houses, this was the first Chairman that had seen actually interrupting people, and at times berating them for their comments and questions. He had done that at a discussion at the India International Centre earlier that year, and I found it most distasteful and disconcerting.)
I sat on the upper tier at the fairly large auditorium: I found a charging point, and around me I remember some folks from the Centre for Internet and Society, and Raman Jit Singh Chima from Google. I type really fast, and this looked like this was very serious for the Internet industry, so I took furious notes on my laptop.
“Robert Ravi (of the TRAI) indicated, that the OTT applications hurt Telcos the world over. Voice and messages is obvious for telcos, and video is another stream that is hurting them. The question that is, what did the rest of the world do? the rest of the world looked on. Tech is good for consumers, tough luck. If telcos aren’t able to recover investments. On the other side, the telcos made the arguments that are we just pipe providers? I don’t know the answer.”
I remember getting quite angered by some of the comments, especially those from Reliance Communications. After a session, I raised my hand. I didn’t often speak at TRAI events, but this time I was really riled up, and called the TRAI out for even considering this discussion, given that any kind of revenue share would be a net neutrality violation, and would be a freedom of speech issue.
I remember how I struggled to justify my point then, but it was a start of something: I had to figure out why I felt this was bad for the Internet, terrible for Indian startups, and why it was even a net neutrality issue. Raman pushed back on a panel he was on.
Subho Ray was particularly articulate in response.
I wrote 8 articles about that day, a few days later on August 8th, and it remains the only public documentation of the proceedings.