Mumbai: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has finally decided not to impose any kind of charges on the widely used apps like WhatsApp, Viber, Hike, WeChat, Line and Skype.
Telecom firms had claimed that the availability of such free apps results in loss of around Rs 5,000 crore annually. Due to continuous losses faced by telecom companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, it demanded the app providers to pay them some kind of revenue.
A seminar was organised by TRAI on regulatory framework for over-the-top (OTT) services. This included discussions on issues such as new developments in OTT and impact of OTT on telecom services providers and their counter measures.
Reports reveal that TRAI has now rejected the idea and cancelled any kind of revenue sharing rules on WhatsApp, Viber or any such free apps. Instead one-third of the incremental revenue of the telecom industry is coming from data services itself.
