Fix call drops and sluggish speed before you think of regulating internet

#Discussion(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

We would have found it absurd if in the late-1990s, the telegraph department had demanded that then-new SMS be regulated the same way as the telegraph service, citing the “same service, same rules” principle. Or, if newspapers had demanded that news websites be regulated by registrar of newspapers. Or, if TV channels now demand that YouTube be regulated as they are. They are entitled to complain that new technologies are taking away business from them. That doesn’t mean that the government has to succumb to their calls for protection.

 – Nitin Pai is director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.

It would be bad enough if TRAI was merely interested in protecting telecom operators at the cost of consumer interests.

India’s regulators work in mysterious ways. Take the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which has suddenly decided that it wants to regulate internet services. As its name clearly suggests, TRAI’s job is to regulate the telecommunications industry. These are the companies that own and operate the “pipes”, like fibre-optic cables, towers, base stations, satellite transponders, undersea cables, switches and networks. TRAI also regulates companies that provide some basic services that run on these “pipes”, namely telephony and internet.

Like its counterparts around the world, it does not, thankfully, regulate services that run on these “basic” services. That’s why you don’t need to apply for a license when you set up a website or launch an app

It would be bad enough if TRAI was merely interested in protecting telecom operators at the cost of consumer interests. The problem is that once one internet service, say instant messaging, falls under regulation, others will follow sooner or later.

The reasons offered will be different – from encouraging homegrown innovation, to defending against sinister foreign companies, to national security – bureaucrats can easily find excellent reasons to acquire power over the private sector. The inevitable consequences will be compliance coercion, cronyism and corruption. Instead of having thousands of technology start-ups building innovative apps and services, we will have a few large conglomerates that know how to ‘manage’ the regulators, dominating the internet landscape. From my perch in Bengaluru, India’s technology entrepreneurship hub, that sounds like disaster.

Further, it is neither here nor there to suggest, as the TRAI appears to be doing, that because WhatsApp and SMS are similar, they should be regulated in a similar manner. First, they are not similar: internet-based messaging services are far more advanced than the rudimentary SMS/MMS that comes as part of the telephone service.

Second, such regulations would hobble and disrupt apps and services which use messaging, voice and video calling as components of their overall service. For instance, the Ola taxi-aggregator app has a chat feature enabling users to contact customer support. Thousands of apps have such features, from movie ticket booking to food delivery to geriatric healthcare services. Getting all of them to get a license from TRAI is absurd.

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