Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is working on a discussion paper to better understand Over The Top services such as such as WhatsApp and Viber which the organisation cannot regulate as of now, reports The Economic Times. The regulatory body wants to know if there are any security threats, what direction these companies will take in the future and understand the concerns of telecom operators and consumers. The discussion paper will look into issues faced by telcos regarding usage of their bandwidth by OTT players and other internet companies without any share in revenue earned. Operators also have to spend periodically to upgrade the infrastructure to meet the growing data needs to consumers. Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal has said recently that OTT players such as WhatsApp need to be regulated as they operate outside jurisdiction. It is worth noting that though WhatsApp may have 40-45 million users in India, it does not make much money from the market yet. What are the security issues: As far as the government is concerned, telecom data such as messages and call records can be easily accessed with a court order, but that is not the case for Internet services. According to reports, the government was planning to ask its US counterpart to share the technology it uses to decrypt conversations happening over chat services like WhatsApp and Skype, if the companies don’t do so themselves. Once the government has the key they can rely on monitoring systems such as CMS and Netra to grab the data. Telcos gripe with OTTs: The…
