Copy from The Hindu
As the telecom sector faces a price disruption, the regulator needs to bridge the data divide
There’s a fresh twist in the tale for India’s telecom sector, which is a success story with around a billion connections issued so far and about 350 million subscribers estimated to have smartphones. About ten months after beginning commercial operations and acquiring 125 million customers with attractive data and voice service offerings,Reliance Jio has announced a planthat could disrupt the telecom landscape by challenging existing price points. For a refundable security deposit of ₹1,500 and a tenth of that as monthly charges, it plans to give away free feature phones that will support 4G services and can be returned after three years. Incumbent service providers, now saddled with high debt that could turn into non-performing assets for lenders, would naturally be wary of this move — although analysts expect overall industry revenue to rebound from its declining trajectory. Similarly, Jio’s proposition of connecting the phone to the television has affected the stock prices of direct-to-home service providers, though it may only offer three-four hours of such viewing per day. While rivals may need to rejig their service offerings to keep up, the disruptive potential of this development could be far more profound, especially in terms of bridging the country’s digital divide.
India’s Internet adoption rate remains among the lowest in the Asia-Pacific region with 422 million subscribers. A large chunk of them access the Net through smartphones. Although wireless data usage has shot up dramatically over the past year, 500-550 million Indians use feature phones that offer no data services. A Kleiner Perkins Internet Trends Report for 2017 notes that even though smartphone and data costs are declining in India, they are still too high for most. Cheaper phones as well as data are essential to bring online the next 100-200 million people. While market forces will come into play here, policymakers need to step up their game too. The government must rationalise the multiple statutory levies on telecom service providers, which have been flagged as major stress points for the sector. Moreover, if data is indeed the new currency, people must have greater control and negotiating power over how their own data is used by service providers or application developers. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, whose chairman R.S. Sharma has said network neutrality is critical in this digital era, must create an ecosystem where users are not stuck in walled garden environments offered by individual players. The government should consider the merits of China’s cybersecurity law that requires tech firms to store all relevant data of local users within its sovereign borders. Apple has agreed to do this in China, but Indian iPhone users cannot even share logs pertaining to data speeds on local networks with the telecom regulator. A new strong new law should protect users’ data and govern lopsided consent clauses set by service providers.
