The views – without naming JioPhone – came during the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) discussions around net neutrality and could spark another round of hostilities between the new entrant and incumbent operators.
“It’s locking customer, because he would come to know that he cannot delete or add an application. This should be a free choice for the customer who can use the device wherever he wants to, otherwise it is equivalent to blocking, which is a more serious issue than throttling,” said Ravi Gandhi, head of regulatory affairs at Bharti Airtel.
Idea Cellular’s chief corporate affairs officer Rajat Mukherjee added, “The device and the ability or inability to load or unload or offload certain kind of application, is clearly discriminatory. It is what was referred at one point of time as a walled garden.”
Both carriers said that a mobile phone must access any browser, operating system or applications that are available on the Internet, else it becomes a breach or violation of network neutrality. Their views came in response to the regulator’s pointed question on some network providers offering bundled mobile phones.
