DoT panel has no solution on net neutrality: IAMAI President

The department of telecommunications (DoT) panel has recently come out with a report on net neutrality that has put out recommendations on the issue. In a conversation with Business Today's Manu Kaushik, the president of The Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) Subho Ray says that panel has no practical solutions to the ongoing tussle between telecom operators and OTT (over-the-top) service providers. Edited excerpts:

Q. What do you make of the DoT panel report?

A. If you look at the last three-four months of debate on net neutrality, the report is actually more positive than the TRAI report. For the first time, a government department has put together a report which says that the principles of net neutrality need to be adopted.

Q. So there was no definition earlier?

A. They are trying to give a definition of what constitutes net neutrality, and they have said that no prioritisation, no throttling and no blocking [is allowed]. In that sense, it's a great advance. Another positive thing is that, perhaps, for the first time, a government policy has come out that [says that it] is not the final policy. It has been put out in the open, and everybody is asked to give their responses to the government website. That itself is a positive state in policy making. Policies are not being made in closed rooms. Everybody has access to it.
 
Q. But the TRAI paper had also asked for recommendations?

A. TRAI used to do it but the government [DoT panel] has started doing it now. The problem is that in such a complicated issue, at some point in time, they [DoT panel] had to be favourable to one or the other [party]. The way I look at this report is that they think that they have been very favourable to the internet company by putting out the principles of net neutrality. So in order to balance that, they wanted to give something to the operators as well.

They have recognised that there is a regulatory arbitrage between voice communication and VoIP communication. Now having recognised regulatory arbitrage, the panel has recommended some regulations. Operators point out that they are incurring huge costs to carry this VoIP data, so there is a great cost arbitrage between operators' voice calls and VoIP voice calls. I cannot figure out how the removal of regulatory arbitrage will remove cost arbitrage, this part has not been shown by this paper.

On the other side, they are saying that Airtel is free to price its products and services. They are giving so much freedom that even if the TRAI does not approve it [operators' schemes] then it will be considered to be approved. The way we are looking at it is that they allowing zero-rating services for the operators, and at the same time, internet companies cannot become gatekeepers. I think this is a kind of freedom given to the operators which they don't deserve. At the same time internet.org is a gatekeeper. They are not naming it but they are saying the internet companies do not have the right to be gatekeepers. These are the two big problems.

Within voice, they are saying international will be treated differently and domestic will be treated differently. They are generally trying to solve the operators' problem but that problem is not being solved. It is not a regulatory problem.

We are saying is that you bring operators up to our [OTT] level rather than bringing them down to their level. There is no regulatory arbitrage, there is only cost arbitrage. Regulatory arbitrage was just a faade to push their commercial interests.
 
Q. Are you saying that the DoT panel is favouring both?

A. They are neither solving the problems of the operators nor solving the problems of the internet companies. They actually have no solution.