Over 100 prominent Indian startups, including industry giants like Paytm, PhonePe, and Zerodha, have united their voices to advocate for the preservation of net neutrality principles. In a letter addressed to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman, P.D. Vaghela, these startups expressed their unwavering commitment to safeguarding the open and equal nature of the internet.
The backdrop of this collective effort is the recent push by telecom service providers (TSPs) to subject over-the-top (OTT) platforms to a network fee, a move that has stirred significant controversy within the tech community. In their letter to TRAI, the startup founders vehemently opposed the notion of subjecting internet services to the same regulatory framework as traditional telecom service providers.
The cornerstone of their argument lies in the belief that treating internet services as direct substitutes for conventional telecom services is fundamentally flawed and lacks empirical evidence. They emphasized that the diverse landscape of internet applications and services defies simplistic categorization into substitutes or rigid segments like messaging or video.
Moreover, the letter underscored the substantial structural and functional disparities between TSPs and internet service providers, rendering regulatory intervention unnecessary. The startups warned against the potential repercussions of allowing TSPs to charge differentially for data they do not exclusively process, asserting that such a practice could jeopardize the very architecture of the internet.
The startups highlighted the essence of the internet, emphasizing that enabling price differentiation based on content types would undermine the fundamental principles that have shaped the internet’s transformative impact.
Expressing concerns about discrimination, tilted competition landscapes, entry barriers, and increased compliance demands, the startups contended that the proposed regulatory framework would disproportionately favor large multinational corporations at the expense of the thriving Indian startup ecosystem.
The letter was collectively signed by influential figures in the Indian startup landscape, including Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar from Razorpay, Dinesh Agarwal from IndiaMART, Rishikesh SR from Rapido, and numerous others.
This united stance from Indian startups comes in response to TRAI’s consultation paper on the regulation of OTT apps. Previously, TRAI made public the responses received from various stakeholders, including Jio’s proposal for OTT players to contribute toward network costs and Bharti Airtel’s advocacy for direct financial contributions from OTT platforms to telecommunications companies.
Critics argue that these proposals, if implemented, would compromise net neutrality principles. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) earlier emphasized that any “collaborative framework” leading to a revenue-sharing mechanism between OTTs and telecom service providers would contravene the net neutrality framework outlined by the Ministry of Communications in 2018.
