Yesterday, TRAI published a consultation paper looking at the options of selective banning of OTT services. The request came from the 26th report of the Parliament Standing Committee on Communication and Information Technology in Dec 2021. The idea is to prevent customer agony as a result of the blanket ban on Internet services to restore law and order. The intent of selective banning is to prevent some OTT applications (like WhatsApp, FaceBook, Telegram Etc) from operating while leaving others untouched. The purpose of this note is to analyze whether an optimal blocking strategy exists which can balance all dimensions of business – cost, customer experience and privacy.
Normal Blocking
Before we discuss the topic of selective blocking of OTT services, let’s understand how normal blocking of internet services works. This the operators do through a technical process called PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Functions). This is nothing but a set of service rules that the operator applies to the specific set of BTSs (Base Stations) that it intends to block. Through this rule, the targetted BTSs can be set for zero or very low data rates, so that all kinds of data services emanating or targeted towards them get throttled – making them useless. Note that PCRF does not discriminate between various data applications and it is also agnostic to IP addresses. It is simple to execute and is very cost-effective.
