Telcos eyeing voice, msg licences?
NEW DELHI: Will home grown over the top (OTT) players, including Jio Chat and Hike, pick up an OTT licence to take advantage of the burgeoning messaging space, currently dominated by foreign companies such as WhatsApp and Viber?
Most of these companies have their own networks. While Reliance Jio runs on its own network, Hike, promoted by Sunil Mittal’s son Kevin Mittal, uses Bharti Airtel’s network.
Foreign players are not likely to go in for OTT licences, since they are not telecom operators and will have to make an exception for India, according to a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch on net neutrality.
“Home grown OTTs may pos- sibly opt for the licence,” the report said.
A one- minute standard voice call on the mobile phone, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), costs the customer 50 paise. A call made using the Internet costs just 4p but its quality is often compromised and not as good as that of telecom services.
Analysts have taken a prag- matic and balanced view on the findings of the committee set up by Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on net neutrality. Regarding voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), analysts said DoT seem to be inclined on regulating OTT voice service providers such as WhatsApp and Jio Chat.
If DoT’s recommendations are implemented, consumers may have to pay more for domestic online calls made via WhatsApp, Viber, Hike, and Skype.
Communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the government will take a final decision on net neutrality, only after the Trai’s recommendations, which is likely to refer the findings of the DoT committee on the subject while finalising the report.
The principle of net neutral- ity has been a subject of intense debate in the country in the last few months.
“The DoT acknowledges that free VoIP would threaten expansion and upgrade of infrastructure by telcos… while it bats for net neutrality, the DoT advocates a levelplaying field between telcos and OTT voice players (including bringing them under a licensing regime),” a report by IIFL has said.
The impact of OTT on voice services (barring cannibalisation on international calling) has not been felt in India currently as 3G penetration (required for a decent call quality) is low at 10%. The impact on messaging in India is, however, in line with international trends, according to a report by broking firm CLSA.