In our land, a complete revolution in the telecommunication sector started approximately 20 years ago. Within that period the Internet, and later the mobile phone became the centre points of communication. A situation has also arisen when the mobile phones completely eclipsed the computers. The latest discussion in this field is net neutrality.
The mobile phones first rendered the landlines irrelevant. But, since the landlines service providers themselves became the mobile phone service providers, it did not create a crisis in the field. But today another layer of crisis is brewing. When Facebook, Google, YouTube and other sites streamed on to the mobile phones, the service providers were anticipating that it would be the beginning of a backlash for them.
When mobile applications like WhatsApp lets the user send SMS-like messages and make voice calls over the Internet, the service providers started losing revenue in SMS and phone calls. The service provider will get only the data charge for using WhatsApp. Naturally this would be much lesser than the revenue they would get through SMS and phone calls.
The mobile phone service providers are putting forward the plan to charge Over The Top (OTT) services like WhatsApp. They also point out that since more OTT services are coming up the service providers like BSNL, Airtel and Idea need to provide more bandwidth. They have to upgrade their servers as well as data distribution networks. But, they do not get a proportionate revenue from the customers.
The telecom service providers want the customer opt for a plan which allows them to access the services they want like Google, Youtube and WhatsApp and also pay a monthly charge for each. Not only will this burden the customer, but also adversely affect the new entrepreneurs on the Internet when the customers are forced to choose just the few OTT services they want. We are facing a situation as the new move will nullify the 'non-alignment' or the option to align with anyone that exists on the Internet will go as the economic considerations come in. Freedom is epicentre of the net neutrality discussion that went viral immediately after of the new media celebrating as the independence day after the scrapping of the Section 66A of the IT Act by the Supreme Court.
The reactions against the market tricks indirectly influencing the OTT decisions of the customer cannot be avoided.
At the same time, the crisis of the telecom service providers cannot be ignored either. We can point out a similar situation in the postal department. The effort of the postal department is the same when it delivers the postcard on which we have written a private message to the addressee and the card we post for participating in a contest conducted by a television channel. But, for the former service the department charges 50 paise and for the latter it charges Rs 2. That means the department is not ''post neutral.'' The rate of water supplied at the construction sites and the the LPG cylinders for hotel use, are similar to this in a way. But in either case, it doesn't curtail the freedom of the individual nor do the competition between two economic interest indirectly influence the customer.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has published a rather elaborate and clear document on its website on the issue, initiating a public debate. It is expected that TRAI will take a decision after considering the both sides of the argument. We can hope that the decision will not be wholly based on the economic interest. It will be better for the service providers to get their just needs done without breaching the freedom of the Internet users--the ways for that need to be explored. It will be better for the companies to keep in mind the basic economic principle that the consumer is the king, when they impose strict measures on them.
(The author is heads the Centre for Bioinformatics, University of Kerala)
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