The Vodafone services based in Mumbai have claimed the government the over the top players like the social media networking applications like the Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, YouTube and other applications should also be taxed. These social media networking companies should be taxed like other organizations to achieve a level playing field. Martin Pieter, the CEO of Vodafone has instructed Times of India that he is more concerned about the increase in the OTT players as they gain strength just giving out their products and services on the internet networks free of charge which makes it much more popular.
The application services like the Facebook application and WhatsApp has increased the number of the subscribers against the growth in the Internet user base and the data speed. Most of the network services consider India as one among the biggest market in the world. The country is rated the second in the whole world market when compared with its usage of Facebook application increasing the number of subscribers in US to be over 100 million in number whereas on the other hand, the number of user accounts using WhatsApp has reached up to 60 million. However, for some reasons which are not been officially announced by the government, these companies need not pay anything as tax from their income while on the other hand, their drastic growth is affecting the growth of the mobile operators business services. WhatsApp and Viber has already put the revenue down for mobile operators by making sending and receiving messages facility free of cost. The free call service of Viber has made it even worse.
Vodafone claims that this social media application of mobile devices has drastically decreased their revenue that they get out of calls and SMS messages. They also add that Hike is another growing messenger service which upon its complete success results in revenue decrease of mobile operators again. Pieters has come out with a convincing statement that the mobile operators have to answer of any legal or illegal interruption of phone calls which can be a government authority request.
CS Rao, the President of Indian’s Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers has commented on the issue raised by Vodafone mobile operator. He has said that these OTT players have no assurance about their product quality and they don’t have any rules to offer quality service. Trai, the telecom operation recently is getting into the concern and trying in depth into the issue and is heading seminars to get further about getting a solution about the issue. Sudhir Gupta, the Telecom secretary admitted that the telecom services provider wants to make a serious discussion and comes to a conclusion where a decision about how these OTT services like Skype, Viber, Facebook and other revenue cutting down applications should be treated. Pieters openly says that they should somehow pay the taxes and do revenue shares with the government. The mobile operators could not accept it anymore when they keep paying the taxes and license fees and do revenue shares with the government when others go on a free ride earning large revenue.