NEW DELHI: Telecom regulator Trai is contemplating whether or not to drop its session paper concerning a licensing regime for over-the-top (OTT) communication providers. This comes on a day when Gopal Vittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, sought a “regulatory oversight” for internet-based voice and messaging providers to sort out spam and cyber frauds.
Trai chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti stated session paper for OTT providers is underneath assessment after the brand new telecom act had dropped OTT providers regulation from its ambit.Govt had stated any regulation for OTT providers will probably be taken up within the new IT regulation that’s presently underneath works.
“I’ll solely say that we are going to study this situation. We can’t let you know what might be finished, or what cannot be finished,” Lahoti stated in response to a query from TOI on whether or not Trai’s session paper loses relevance after the OTT topic was taken out of the telecom regulation.
Vittal, whose firm got here out with an ‘AI-powered community resolution’ that it claims will counter spam, was extra direct in his response when requested whether or not OTT communications providers must be held accountable for unsolicited communication. “We want a way by which they arrive into ambit… a regulatory oversight.”
Telecom corporations like Airtel and its friends equivalent to Jio and Vodafone Thought have lengthy been demanding ‘identical providers, identical guidelines’ as a step to hunt regulatory ambit over OTT gamers equivalent to Meta’s WhatsApp and Instagram, Apple’s Facetime, Skype, and Telegram.
They argue that whereas conventional telecom corporations are subjected to varied laws, together with licensing, and are answerable to law-enforcement companies, the identical is just not requested from the internet-driven OTT gamers.
