OTTs targeted by India’s biggest carrier
Days after moving to discourage use of over-the-top applications by implementing a voice over Internet Protocol rate hike, India’s Bharti Airtel pulled the change on Monday, according to reports.
OTT providers like Skype, Viber and others, use a customer’s data connection to relay voice calls.
Bharti told subscribers that discounted data rates would only be good for surfing the Web, not using VoIP services.
“All Internet/data packs or plans (through which customer can avail discounted rate) shall only be valid for Internet browsing and will exclude VoIP (both incoming/outgoing),” the carrier noted on its website. “VoIP over data connectivity would be charged at standard data rates of 4p/10 KB (3G service) and 10p/10 KB (2G service).”
In the wake of the announcement, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was quoted as saying, “We will look into it. Government will come back with a structured response.”
Potentially alluding to that comment, a Bharti representative told Reuters that the company changed its posture because of “news reports that a consultation paper will be issued shortly by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on issues relating to services offered by OTT players including VoIP.”
The availability of OTT services is a key part of the ongoing net neutrality debate. In that regard, major carriers like Bharti foot the bill for build-out of network infrastructure that’s supported by subscriber revenues. OTT services divert that potential revenue while still tapping the physical infrastructure.
In the U.S., for instance, streaming-content provider Netflix has taken a strong position against cable companies that throttle customer data speed. United Kingdom-based Juniper Research in October released a white paper projecting that wireless carriers could lose some $14 billion in 2015 to OTT players. Paper author Windsor Holden told RCR Wireless News that the telecom industry is going through “a significant migration of communication formats.”
Bharti, which is headquartered in New Delhi, India, operates 2G, 3G and 4G in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. The company served some 287 million customers at the end of 2013, according to the firm’s website.
