Phone services major Bharti Airtel’s managing director and vice chairman Gopal Vittal on Wednesday raised concerns about increasing regulatory overreach in the telecom sector despite its limited role in areas such as digital trust and security.
Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, the telecom industry’s flagship annual event, Vittal said that telecom operators are being disproportionately burdened with regulations compared to other players in the digital ecosystem.
He also reiterated the need for further tariff hikes in the industry and said Airtel is exploring alternative revenue streams.
“Most regulators today globally, not just in India, are focused on the telecom sector, which is a very small part of the surface area of the problems that are being created in trust and security,” Vittal said at the event in New Delhi.
According to Vittal, the problem of trust and security goes well beyond the telecom sector and to other players in the digital ecosystem, which also ride on telecom networks. But regulations are not keeping pace with the changes in technology.
Vittal’s comments have come at a time when the over-the-top (OTT) communication apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, among others, continue to stay out of the ambit of regulations. Telecom operators have a long standing demand from the government to bring such apps under the regulations.
Uneven rules for OTT players
In March, Vittal had urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to expand its regulatory oversight to OTT communication platforms in order to significantly curb spam.
“While regulatory efforts have significantly curbed spam and unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) over SMS and voice, bad actors are increasingly shifting their operations to OTT communication platforms, where regulatory oversight remains limited,” Vittal had said in a letter to Trai chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti then.
In April, at a meeting of the Joint Committee of Regulators that Trai organised, the ministry of electronics and information technology had said that it would engage with stakeholders on how to tackle the issues of spam and scams on OTT platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram as also RCS (Rich Communication Service) services.
In September 2024, Airtel launched India’s first network-based AI-powered spam detection solution. The solution alerts customers in real-time on all suspected spam calls and SMSes.
In the last one year, Airtel has identified over 48.3 billion spam calls and blocked 320,000 fraudulent links. Vittal said even as India has solved the problem of connectivity, the next challenge lies in safeguarding users and strengthening institutional collaboration.
The Airtel MD also pressed for the need of a global institution like a fraud bureau to curb the menace of spam. “The entire ecosystem must come together…no company can do this (control spam menace) alone,” he said.
In response to Vittal’s address, minister of state for communications Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani said the government is committed to ensuring regulation without stifling innovation.
“Every futuristic technology—semiconductors, quantum computing, AI, and 6G—is being developed in mission mode with clear objectives and dedicated funding,” Pemmasani said. He added that the government’s focus is on responsible use of AI and ensuring transparency in how algorithms work, because much of what happens in AI is invisible.
Airtel ranks just behind market leader Reliance Jio by subscribers. As of June end, Airtel’s total mobile subscriber base was at 362.8 million with an average revenue per user, or Arpu, of ₹250. Jio has 498.1 million users each of whom net it an Arpu of ₹208.8.
“We (the industry) are operating with the lowest Arpus and the lowest rate per gigabyte. Yet you have to make money,” Vittal said, adding that there is a headroom for pricing to go up in India.
In August, Airtel announced its sovereign cloud offering amid growing focus among Indian enterprises on securing sensitive data.
