India’s telecom players have renewed their offensive against OTT platforms such as WhatsApp and Netflix for riding piggyback on their networks to reach out to end-users.

The Cellular Operators Association of India, which represents the interests of the telecom players, has written to the DoT secretary lobbying for their right to levy a usage charge on the OTT platforms.

The telecom players have pointed out to their investments in creating infrastructure and OTTs — which operate outside the pale of any regulation — are able to not only leech revenues from the telecom players through their services but also pay no fee to the networks.

The latest salvo from the COAI raises the heat on OTTs at a time the department of telecom (DoT) is keen to bring them under regulation in the new telecom policy, in the public domain for views. Telecom regulator Trai has rejected the need to regulate OTTs at least twice in the past.

The COAI has suggested levying a “usage charge” for actual traffic carried by OTT on telecom networks. It said that the usage charge will be decided mutually between telcos and OTT players.

The COAI letter to telecom secretary K. Rajaraman, a copy of which is available with The Telegraph, said “any entity which creates a property or infrastructure by investing funds, is entitled to take usage charges (rent or lease charges, etc) from the user of that property or infrastructure who uses the same for commercial purposes”.

Moreover, the government must provide a legal framework to enable the service providers to charge any user. “If a mutual agreement is not reached, an appropriate licensing and regulatory framework should be in place which governs the contribution of OTT players towards creation of network infrastructure,” it stated.

The letter highlighted how charging OTTs is being talked across the world. “The European Commission (EC) is advocating for formalising of due legislation for OTT players to share the network investment burden of the telecom players,” it said.