Facebook joins GSM operators lobby group COAI

Social networking giant Facebook has joined GSM operators lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), a move that would help it get a bigger and effective platform to raise various issues with the government, and also allow it to closely interact with top mobile operators, The Times of India reported.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led company has become an associate member of the  association comprising companies that manufacture or support the functioning, promotion, R&D and mobile communications services.

Rajan S Mathews, director general of COAI said social networking especially Facebook had changed the way Indians worked, communicated, socialised and did business.

The other associate members of the association include Alcatel Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, IBM, GTL Infrastructure, Huawei Technologies, Indus Towers, Intel Corporation, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Qualcomm and ZTE.

A Facebook official said joining COAI as an associate member reflected its focus on mobile technologies, access and its continued desire to work in collaboration with the industry to increase connectivity.

Mathews told Business Standard initially the idea of getting more members in COAI came after the government decided to go for unified licensing, shifting from the multi-licensing structure where companies were given licences according to their service offerings.

With this move Facebook becomes the first non-telecom company to join COAI, whose membership was restricted to cellular operators and telecom infrastructure companies, the paper said.

The development is likely to see e-commerce companies too, gain membership of the body as it would broaden the scope for engagement of all stakeholders.

According to Rajan, the mobile had become the core platform for even the e-commerce operators and an association like COAI gave these a strong platform to engage better with the government and all the stakeholders in the telecom sector.

COAI was working towards getting more members from industries that manufactured or supported the functioning, promotion, research development and evolution of mobile communications services, he said, adding that core membership would, however, be restricted to the unified licence holders only.

Facebook's COAI membership comes at a time when cellular operators had been lobbying with the Telecom regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to regulate internet-based over-the-top (OTT) services such as instant messaging applications (See: Telcos want Trai to regulate mobile apps like Skype, WhatsApp to be regulated).

Telcos had also been working toward a revenue-sharing model with OTTs, which hadbeen eating into their messaging as also value-added services (VAS) revenue.