The latest letter from the telecom lobby COAI challenging the Indian telecom regulator TRAI's Net Neutrality (Discriminatory Pricing) regulation, appears to be merely a formality before they take the regulator to court. We've copied the letter below. This is the COAI's second letter in less than a month (the first), and asks for the same thing as they did earlier, but the language hints towards some of the arguments they will use if and when they go to court. The telecom industry has been emboldened by the Supreme Court of India overturning the TRAI's order on call drops, which in particular emphasised lack of evidence in formulating the regulation. Here's a point by point rebuttal of some of the points in the COAI's letter to the TRAI: 1. On competition in the telecom space: COAI says: "In a fiercely competitive market like ours we sincerely believe that it is probably counter-productive for TRAI to take the extremely harsh position of this Regulation.""Intense competition in the market,with 3 to 4 times the number of players as compared to global norms,has ensured that TSPs have always priced sensibly while keeping the customers in mind." MediaNama's Take: a. This is factually incorrect. The market in India is no longer fiercely competitive. As of March 2016, just three of 13 telecom operators - Airtel, Idea, Vodafone - had as much as 66% of the active customers, up from 64% in March 2015. The top four telecom operators have 76%. Over the past year, MTS has exited, selling to Reliance Communications,…
