OTT players don’t need regulation: TRAI

In its recommendations submitted to the department of telecommunication (DoT) on Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has ruled out bringing over-the-top (OTT) players such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Viber, Telegram, etc, under any form of regulatory framework. It has asserted that market forces should be allowed to respond to the situation, adding that if required an intervention can be made at an appropriate time.

The regulator also dismissed the need for any regulatory interventions in respect of issues related with privacy and security of OTT services at the moment. The decision is in sync with the view held by most internet activists and associations representing digital application providers like IAMAI, Nasscom, US-India Business Council, etc who were against any kind of regulatory framework for the OTTs.

The discussion goes back to about 5-6 years when telecom operators demanded that OTTs be brought under a regulatory framework under what they called “one service, one rule”. The OTT players, however, had maintained that their services are different from mobile operators as they transmit communication data over IP networks and there is no dedicated end-to-end channel being established for the duration of the communication.