Subject: Regulatory Services for Over The Top services - Please Keep the Net Neutral
From: Anirudh Patil
Date: 31-Mar-15 7:20 PM
To: advqos@trai.gov.in

Dear Sir,

I recently read the TRAI whitepaper on Regulatory Services for Over The Top services and am concerned about it's implications.

The net as I understand should definitely be a commodity. India has grown in the last few years based on a boom in the information technology world and our future growth depends on the entrepreneurs in this field. To enable entrepreneurship, it is important to create a level playing field on the internet. So if a user has to pay extra for a particular site, it will kill entrepreneurship and will affect our growth.


Fundamentally, supporting old technologies such as SMS over newer OTT services such as WhatsApp is regressive. We are encouraging people to use outdated technology and I am not sure what that will achieve.

Communication over data networks is the future of information technology and any regulation countering that is not only regressive but will also be difficult to implement.

Coming to the point of losses to telcos, if the losses faced by telcos because of data networks are really that high, they may increase the rates of data usage equally for all kinds of data. Also, pardon my ignorance on this issue but what if 2G and 3G services we carried by different service providers and I was able to get a data service from a company that was not providing voice and SMS service (similar to broadband service provider). In that case, the TSP would have been an ISP and would have provided data services for really cheap prices and the TSPs would have no market in the data services spaces. Thus, we are creating an artificial scarcity by charging for OTT services by telecom providers.

To summarise:

1. Net neutrality is important for entrepreneuship and all consumers in India
2. Supporting SMS and voice calls over OTT services is supporting outdated technology which is regressive.
3. Telcos may increase data rates on an overall basis (and not selectively) if they are suffering losses.
4. Discouraging new technology is creating artificial scarcity which makes little economic sense.


I request you to kindly keep the net neutral as differential charging for OTT services will kill the idea of internet as we know it and India will be separated from the metaphorical "Global Village".


Thank you,
Anirudh Patil