Globally, carriage operators are eyeing a chunk of revenue earned by content streaming websites. The South Korean government introduced the Sending Party Pays Model in 2016 and mandated the sending party – an OTT streaming or communication service – to pay for internet traffic. Thailand too attempted something similar but had to backtrack in the face of consumer backlash. India is no different and telecom operators here want OTT services to follow in the footsteps of South Korea – especially since they’ve incurred significant costs to invest in 5G networks. On the other hand, OTTs claim that they contribute to traffic and hence telcos’ revenues, and so telcos should share their revenues with OTTs. This session will discuss the fallout of this conflict and the impact on both telcos and content providers.
Keynote address: Mr. V. Raghunandan, Secretary, TRAI
Moderator: Mr. Vivan Sharan, Partner, Koan Advisory
Panelists:
Mr. T.V. Ramachandran, President, Broadband India Forum
Mr. Rahul Vatts, Chief Regulatory Officer, Bharti Airtel
Ms. Gowree Gokhale, FICCI Co-Chair, Task Force Privacy and Data Security & Partner, Nishith Desai Associates