OTT players may have been removed from new telecom bill

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

government is likely to have removed over-the-top (OTT) players, or apps, from the definition of telecommunication services in the telecom bill, giving huge relief to communication service providers such as WhatsApp and Telegram who will thus remain out of telecom regulation. Further, officials aware of the details told ET that the government has proposed administrative allocation of spectrum for satellite services, as part of the bill, a move that will be a major victory for satcom companies like Elon Musk's Starlink, Bharti Group-backed OneWeb and Amazon, and deal a setback to the likes of Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea who were pushing for those airwaves to be auctioned.

The bill itself is believed to have been cleared by the Cabinet on Friday, but it's not clear when it will be tabled in Parliament. The draft bill was issued in September last year and put up for public consultation.

The DoT appears to have had a rethink on regulating communication apps, and now believe the existing definition under the Indian Telegraph Act is good enough and there is no need to specifically put OTT in the new bill. As per the Telegraph Act, a «telegraph» means any appliance, instrument, material or apparatus used or capable of use for transmission or reception of signs, signals, writing, images and sounds or intelligence of any nature by wire, visual or other electro-magnetic emissions, radio waves or Hertzian waves, galvanic, electric or magnetic means.

Officials said that the current definition covers all kinds of communications happening over a telecom network. «The government is already empowered to regulate the OTT apps as per the Telegraph Act, but it is not exercising its powers.