NEW DELHI: At least 128 start-up founders have urged the TRAI to rethink any move towards over-regulation of internet services being described as OTT services, which may have discriminatory consequences.

The 128 startup founders who have written to the Telecom Regulatory

ity of India (TRAI) include Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath, Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, PhonePe’s Sameer Nigam, Razorpay’s Harshil Mathur, Ajay Kaushal, Director, Billdesk, Nitin Saluja, founder, Chaayos, Ritesh Malik, founder, Innov8 and Rohan Verma, CEO, MapmyIndia, to name a few.

Raising their concerns over the proposed regulation by the TRAI to selectively ban over-the-top (OTT) platforms, the founders of the start-ups said they are principally against bringing such services under the same or similar regulatory framework as telecommunications service providers (TSPs).

“We believe the premise largely relied upon in the consultation paper as well as some of the comments submitted by TSPs (internet services supposedly being direct substitutes of traditional services and thus stealing the latter’s revenues and profits as well as the existence of a market failure, in which there is a lack of adequate financial incentive for large TSPs to invest in infrastructure due to the lack of compensation) is unfounded,” they argued.