37% rural youth sans Internet access: Study
That a DoT panel has come out in favour of partial regulation of over-the-top services like Skype and Viber is easy to understand. For, no matter what the proponents of the so-called net neutrality may argue, allowing a Skype or a Viber a free ride on networks—that telcos have spent upwards of Rs 750,000 crore on—was untenable for a variety of reasons. One, since all telecom services are regulated/licensed by law, and telcos pay up to 30% of their annual revenues for this to the government, it is not possible to create one group of services for whom this does not apply—not just in terms of sharing of revenues, but in terms of obligations like annual contributions to the USO Fund or to monitor calls and meet KYC norms. The fact that such regulation is not to be done for ILD calls, however, suggests the committee is trying to balance interests rather than simply going by licence conditions.
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