Large tech firm removing apps for revenue contradicts LTGs stand on revenue share: COAI

Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Tuesday said technology giants are ready to evict nonpaying small businesses from their app platforms though large traffic generators (LTG) themselves prefer to enjoy a free ride over telecom service providers’ networks.

The comments have come against the backdrop of internet giant Google seeking to impose a fee of 11 per cent to 26 per cent on inapp payments. Google last week removed apps that were not paying the fee after the Supreme Court did not provide interim relief to companies behind these apps in their battle against the search giant’s app marketplace fee. “It is rather surprising that these LTGs, which are generally global corporates based in foreign countries, are ready to evict nonpaying small businesses as they expect the “immense value” that their platform provides to the apps, themselves prefer to enjoy a freeride over the TSPs’ networks, while profiting heavily from them.

“Moreover, they continue to make misleading claims that the proposed fairshare would hurt the startups, MSMEs and smaller players and constrain innovation, which is clearly contrary to the truth,” COAI Director General SP Kochhar said in a statement.

After government intervention, Google has agreed to restore apps and work out a solution with apps over the dispute on payment charges. COAI, whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, has proposed a 5 8 per cent revenue share fee on LTG apps like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc to support the cost of telecom infrastructure. As per industry estimates, 80 per cent of data traffic carried by telecom networks is generated by LTG apps.