Draft telecom Bill: Trai opposed to regulation of OTT platforms

Has communicated this to the telecom dept

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is not in favour of regulation for over-the-top (OTT) communication service providers written into the telecom Bill, sources have told Business Standard.

They added the sector regulator had communicated this to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) during consultation on the draft telecom Bill. The draft telecom Bill, released by the government for public stakeholder comments last month, extends the definition of telecommunication service to include OTT players such as WhatsApp, Signal, Zoom, Skype, Google, and Telegram, which provide (voice or video) calling and messaging services.

The definition was amended after telecom service providers