‘Foreign apps must pay for telecom network’

NEW DELHI: Foreign apps generating large volumes of data should contribute to the building of telecom networks as it will create the right structure in the market, a senior official of think tank C-DEP said.

Technology industry veteran and President of Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research Jaijit Bhattacharya said he favours net neutrality principles and the situation at present is to democratise access to the internet in a manner that those who consume less should not be made to subsidise the cost of service that is being consumed others.

“The key large data generators are all non-Indians. They are either American or Chinese. I think, from a policy perspective, it makes a lot of sense to make sure that they contribute to the network on which they are riding and generate billions of dollars in revenues, while pushing on networks into a state where they may not be financially viable after a few more rounds of capital investment,” he said. Telecom operators and internet-based apps have been at loggerheads over the issue of revenue sharing. Telecom operators have been demanding that over-the-top (OTT) players that generate huge volumes of data should pay a fee to them for building networks like it is done to build expressways for smooth and fast rides. However, industry bodies whose members include apps like Google, Facebook, Netflix etc have opposed the proposal and termed it to be a violation of net neutrality principles.

Bhattacharya said telecom companies keep struggling in arranging capital to build networks but their return on capital is in the low single digit which is not enough to please investors. “Let’s not treat telecom players as private sector entities, but as a national resource. If we lose control of our telecom companies, and they’re not Indian anymore then it will have a very deep impact. Telecom and digital are the heartbeat of the country. If we don’t have a telecom and a digital infrastructure, which is under our control, then we can end up losing our national security also,” he said.