{"id":215915,"date":"2022-11-25T20:31:39","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T15:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=215915"},"modified":"2022-11-25T20:33:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T15:03:54","slug":"a-word-of-advice-on-ott-and-the-draft-telecom-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-word-of-advice-on-ott-and-the-draft-telecom-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"A word of advice on OTT and the draft Telecom Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>&#8211; The post is based on the article <strong>\u201cA word of advice on OTT and the draft Telecom Bill\u201d<\/strong> published in <strong>The Hindu <\/strong>on <strong>25th November 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus: <\/strong>GS2- Parliament and state legislatures<\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance: <\/strong>Bills and Acts of the Parliament<\/p>\n<p><strong>News- <\/strong>The article explains the issues related to inclusion of OTT communication services within the new Telecom Bill.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Why is the rationale behind this move not logical?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The main argument behind its inclusion is the principle of <strong>\u201csame service, same rules\u201d<\/strong>. However, this is erroneous. Same service means the user should be able to substitute one for the other at their own discretion. But no OTT provider can reach a customer without the intermediation and services of a telecom service provider.<\/p>\n<p>OTT communication services are applications or <strong>value-added communication services<\/strong> that ride on the basic communication services that telcos provide. The latter is in the <strong>domain of carriage <\/strong>and the former is in the <strong>domain of applications<\/strong> such as group and video communication, encryption, etc<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The inflow of<strong> venture capital funding<\/strong> to OTTs would be severely discouraged.<\/p>\n<p>Telecom Bill will impact only India-based OTT players. Those operating from overseas would not be impacted. This would be disadvantageous for Indian service providers vis a vis their foreign competitors.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Why should OTT communication services be kept out of the ambit of Telecom law? <\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>OTT communication services are already covered under the existing <strong>IT Act<\/strong>. OTTs can be regulated but not<strong> licensed or pre-authorised<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The Telecom Bill is based on the principle that provision of telecommunication services is the sole privilege of the government except to the extent that private entities are <strong>licensed or authorised<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the IT Act is based on the exact opposite premise. Everything is permitted except that which is specifically and explicitly barred. It enables and encourages <strong>creativity, innovation<\/strong>, new products and venture capital funding.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What if only the communications component of OTTs were to be regulated?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>It is not possible to distinguish an OTT communication service from any other OTT platform. Every OTT platform such as Flipkart, Ola, MakeMyTrip also incorporate an element of messaging.<\/p>\n<p>Requiring a licence or authorisation for an element that is an inherent part of a platform\u2019s activity would be tantamount to control of the entire activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source&#8211; The post is based on the article \u201cA word of advice on OTT and the draft Telecom Bill\u201d published in The Hindu on 25th November 2022. Syllabus: GS2- Parliament and state legislatures Relevance: Bills and Acts of the Parliament News- The article explains the issues related to inclusion of OTT communication services within the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-word-of-advice-on-ott-and-the-draft-telecom-bill\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A word of advice on OTT and the draft Telecom Bill<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10498],"class_list":["post-215915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}