The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has asked whether applications should be regulated as "other service providers" (OSPs) in a consultation paper issued on March 29th. OSPs are, under the Department of Telecommunications' definition, companies that provide application services that use the telecom infrastructure and resources provided by telecom operators to provide services like "tele-banking, tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-trading, ecommerce, call centre" etc. OSP's aren't licensed, but have to register, and the registration (for Rs 1000) is valid for 20 years, and is extended for another 10 years upon request in the 19th year. The TRAI consultation paper flags the issue that the broad and vague definition of OSPs is problematic: in the consultation paper it says that this definition is perhaps too broad and subjective, "prone to different interpretations in the current scenario." The paper also says that there's no diffferentiation between whether something meant for captive use or for a customer. "This makes the scope of OSP very wide covering almost all the IT based services falling under the definitions of OSP." In that sense, it also asks whether OSPs could include online services which are purely based on data/Internet as well, and not just based on taking phone calling resources from telecom operators. This forms the first key part of the consultation on OSPs from the TRAI: Q1. Please provide your views on the definition of the Application Service in context of OSP. Whether, the Application Services which are purely based on data/ internet should be covered under…
