A Setback!

Attempts to determine how apps are consumed over internet traffic failed in the wake of a strong backlash from users.

The year gone by saw voices in the telecom industry getting stronger and stronger against over-the-top communication services in particular. Industry captains made concerted attempts to drive home the point that services like WhatsApp, Skype and Viber were making big profits on small investments, all at the cost of telcos, who have assiduously been building data highways involving huge expenses.

Industry voices urged the need for either taxing or charging usage of these apps over the telecom networks, and the momentum kept building up. Given that India doesn’t have any Net Neutrality laws in place, the industry actually had an opportunity to pursue its interests within legal boundaries.

Bharti Airtel was among the first to test the idea, and in December 2014 announced changes to its service terms and exclude voice-over-IP (VoIP) data from its service packs, followed by a separate data pack for VoIP apps. This immediately invited criticism from the online communities and Airtel was quick to recognize the sentiments and retract the proposed changes back.

However, all hell was literally considered to have broken lose when in March 2015 Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) floated a consultation paper inviting comments on Regulatory Framework for Over-The-Top Services. Over a million emails, mostly in strong support of net neutrality flooded TRAI. Nevertheless, some concerns remain valid, especially those around rising cannibalization of traditional telecom services by OTT services. For example, as cited by TRAI in the consultation paper, in 2013, Skype carried an estimated 214 billion minutes of international “on-net” calls (i.e. from one Skype app to another, rather than calls made from Skype to a regular phone). Skype’s traffic was almost 40 percent the sizeof the entire conventional international telecom market and in growth terms, it far outpaced the combined growth in the voice minutes of the global telecom industry, it noted.

Airtel, which was obviously not good enough at listening into the public sentiments, floated its Airtel Zero plan at around the same time, again inviting a backlash from the online communities comprising existing Airtel users as well. Soon enough, internet companies like Flipkart, which had partnered with Airtel for the plan, backed out and the plan failed even before it could take off.

Interestingly, Reliance Communications, which in February 2015 had launched