Netflix: Streaming giants oppose Trai’s bid to govern content

Content delivery companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Universal Studios and Warner Bros have opposed the telecom regulator’s intention to regulate them, arguing that they are not telecom operators and don’t fall under the authority’s regulatory ambit.

A host of CDN (content delivery network) companies, through global industry bodies such as the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) and the Broadband India Forum (BIF), as well as advisory groups like Deepstrat and Koan Advisory, threw their collective weight during an open house session organised by the regulator, arguing that CDNs only cache and deliver content, rather than establishing end-to-end communication. “CDNs are neither telecom operators nor internet service providers,” said Debashish Bhattacharya, deputy director-general at the BIF, an industry grouping representing Amazon, Google, Meta, Netflix and Disney Star among others.

“CDNs are either a customer of the telecom service providers or a private network interconnecting with telecom service provided through transit and peering…(They) are not involved in delivery or provisioning of bandwidth,” he said.

Accordingly, the quality-of-service rules of telecom services and net neutrality obligations are not applicable to CDNs, he argued.

Content delivery network is a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of internet content.