If everything goes according to the wishes of telecom
operators in the country then very soon you will be paying
extra to use popular apps like WhatsApp, Skype etc. While
this may come across as a rude shock to most of us but
reality states the obvious concerns of telcos in India who
are worried about the impact of over the top (OTT) players
like WhatsApp, Skype. Services like these continue thrive in
a world wherein they are free of regulations and taxes that
plague the business of operators like Airtel, Vodafone etc
find it hard (legally) to make the OTT players pay for the
services right now.
"Our endeavour is not to accrue licenses from OTT players
but all we want is to have same rules for everyone," as
highlighted by Himanshu Kapania, managing director, Idea
Cellular speaking on behalf of the COAI committee . In their
own peculiar way, telcos do not want to remove the impact
of OTT players; instead they want them to fall under the
same set of rules and regulations that keeps the telcos
functioning.
But giving it a major thought, telcos have somewhat warned
of the scenario wherein consumers might have to end up
paying for the price that OTT players are supposed to pay to
the telcos, "if voice and data aren't controlled in equal
manner then telcos won't have an option but to increase
data tariffs 6x in the coming years, as stated by Gopal Vittal
vice chairman for COAI and CEO at Bharti Airtel recently.
According to telcos, they are concerned about the money
that is getting pumped into the industry to improve/develop
the infrastructure and here come players like WhatsApp, out
of nowhere to impact on their SMS margins and slowly
eating into their voice revenue as well in the form of data
usage.
Will you start paying the likes of Airtel and Vodafone extra
just so that you could continue using apps like Skype or
Viber? Your voice matters and we'd like you to share it with
us through the comments below.
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