The Typical nature of Indian Telecom sector is to snap any opportunity to generate revenue for government. The recent deal of Facebook and WhatsApp must have attracted government eye. In the past few months many regulatory bodies of India is raising their concern regarding huge growth attached with free voice and messaging applications. Many article came in print media that security agencies are contemplating actions against leading messaging applications due to non compliance on security side.
I am pretty sure that the recent deal must have given Indian regulatory enough insight to monetize Over the Top Application as revenue spinner for the government. I would not be surprised that government would start creating an environment before proposing license fee or usage fee or imposing stringent regulation to make sure that the messaging apps industry in one or another form pays bulk of their generated revenue to government.
It is also logical that if Indian Mobile operators are going for auction in order to protect their user base as well as forced to buy in BWA license in order to offer data centric services then, what is the reason that messaging applications companies are not charged per user. Any move by government would be blessing in disguise for Mobile Operators and it would bring some of the lost revenue back to Mobile operator. One must not be surprised if Mobile operators changed their stance and start asking for monthly enablement charges from user or companies offering such services using Mobile operators network.
In any of the circumstances, Mobile operators are going to gain. Recently, many Mobile Operators and Europe and other parts of world started offering messaging services and India may follow the same path.
