Reliance Jio‘s free telecast of Indian Premier League (IPL) matches on JioCinema has prompted Bharti Airtel to approach Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for a one service-one rate system. Airtel has sought a regulatory mechanism prohibiting differential pricing by telecom operators for content on their apps if it is also available on DTH and Cable TV channels.
JioCinema has the digital rights for IPL matches, while the broadcasting rights are with Disney-Star. While the matches can be viewed on JioCinema for free, Disney-Star cannot offer the same as Trai’s tariff order has fixed channel price at Rs 19. For an entry-level cable TV bouquet, a consumer needs to pay around Rs 325 per month and if the bouquet does not have Disney-Star, an additional Rs 19 needs to be paid for it to be added.
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Airtel basically wants the differential tariff regulation, which currently applies to telecom service providers for their apps, to be made applicable if they choose to broadcast content available on DTH and cable TV. For instance, the telecast of IPL matches should be at the same price by cable/DTH and a telecom operator.
“Regulatory framework must include all modes of delivery of broadcast content across all platforms irrespective of underlying technology used. Same content should be available across all platforms at same price and there should be pricing parity irrespective of technology,” Airtel has written to Trai.
“Apply the legal framework of cross-media ownership (vertical integration) to all platforms (including the digital platforms) irrespective of underlying technology,” it has said.
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Under differential tariff regulation for the telecom sector, a telecom service provider cannot have different charges for any of its apps for its own subscribers and users of other service providers, if the app is available on the web. To illustrate, Airtel has to keep the charges same for its entertainment app Wynk for its own users and those of other operators, since the app can be downloaded from the web. The same principle applies to JioCinema.
Reliance Jio, however, is opposed to Airtel’s stand, maintaining that any such a move is not possible with growing convergence and such a regulation will hinder convergence between different technologies in future. For instance, company officials told FE such a regulation would mean the whole YouTube model of showing all kinds of content for free would collapse.
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“Any change in policy or regulatory structure must ensure the continuity of provision of services by utilising the infrastructure created by current investments, both by telecom operators and broadcasters. Therefore, in order to have regulatory certainty, we suggest that the minimal required changes in the existing regulatory landscape should be carried out to address the challenges arising from convergence of carriage and technological upgradation,” Jio has written, countering Airtel’s stance.
“There seems to be no need to re-engineer the existing regulatory and administration processes. Further, as the telecommunication laws are already being recast under the draft Telecommunication Bill 2022, any change in regulation should be proposed only after there is a complete clarity in the proposed telecommunication law,” it has added.
Bharti’s stand is that while all broadcast services — DTH, cable TV, IPTV — are under tariff regulation, there should be no exemption for telecom operators if they choose to broadcast the same channels through their apps. OTT platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video do not fall in the same category as they show exclusive content, it said.
In any case, pure-play OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video do not come under Trai’s regulatory purview.
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Trai is currently carrying out a consultative process to regulate converged digital technologies and services. It is also scheduled to come out with a separate consultation paper on regulating communication-based OTT service providers like WhatsApp, following which the government will take a policy decision towards this end.
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Trai officials told FE that at the time of framing regulations for telecom service providers and broadcasting channels, nobody had thought that the two would converge in the manner they have done today, therefore the current regulatory framework needs to be reworked.
