COAI in favour of charging fees from large apps in India too
The proposed bill named, Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act of 2023, has classified social media platforms, streaming service, over-the-top messaging service, video gaming service.
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NEW DELHI: Telecom operators want the government to adopt a bill, similar to a proposal in the US Congress, that would make large internet apps contribute to infrastructure costs to help lower broadband costs for consumers, a senior industry official said.
A bill sponsored by US Senators Markwayne Mullin, Mark Kelly and Mike Crapo in US Congress last month aimed at lowering broadband costs for consumers proposed a direction to telecom regulator Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to mandate social media platforms, streaming services apps, cloud computing service providers like WhatsApp, YouTube, Netflix, Google etc to contribute to universal fund that is used for building networks.
The proposed bill named, Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act of 2023, has classified social media platforms, streaming service, over-the-top messaging service, video gaming service, video-conferencing service, e-commerce platform, search engines under edge services providers.
Telecom industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said the proposed bill in the US vindicates the stand taken by service providers in India.
“We are very happy that whatever is given as a provision proposed in this bill, vindicates our stance. It is not only the telecom service providers who are there, it is edge computing, who are providing content services. Edge computing entities and telecom service providers, or as they call it, broadband providers, both have been clearly defined. This needs to be done in the Indian ecosystem as well,” COAI, director general, SP Kochhar said. The bill proposes to levy charges only on those entities that generate more than 3 per cent of the estimated quantity of broadband data transmitted in the US and over $5 billion in annual revenue.
Kochhar said telecom operators in India want only large traffic generators, which are a handful of foreign companies, to contribute to the infrastructure cost and similar provisions have been proposed in the US Congress.
