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What does Facebook think of COAI’s anti-WhatsApp letter to the TRAI?

Around a month ago, Rajan Mathews, the Director of the telecom industry lobbying association COAI, sent a letter to Rahul Khullar, the Chairman of the Indian telecom regulator TRAI, in which Mathews made the following key points about WhatsApp's proposed voice service: 1. OTT (Internet) services (including WhatsApp) which offer Voice violate and circumvent Indian telecom licensing provisions 2.  WhatsApp violates Indian laws in respect of routing and switching and has become a virtual network provider without a license, bypassing number allocation, security norms and routing norms since it uses MSISDNs for switching. 3. Without a licensing regime of VoIP, there will be a disruption in the existing business of telecom operators, and be a loss to the exchequer (through telecom operators). This was sent in the same month that Airtel* violated net neutrality, and forced the TRAI to announce a consultation. The COAI has previously sent a paper explaining telecom operators issues with Internet services, which they feel are "free riding" on their networks, and the TRAI had also held an event where issues between Internet services and telecom operators were debated. We've got extensive reports from that event here. MediaNama received a copy of the COAI letter from a representative of a telecom operator member of the COAI, and sent the following questions to Mathews and the COAIs PR agency two weeks ago, who haven't responded to our mail: 1. Could you clarify the basis of your claim that WhatsApp is a Virtual Network Provider? It hasn't licensed  bandwidth…

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Written By

Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS

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