An uneasy blurring of content carriage

An uneasy blurring of content carriage

Reliance Industries (RIL) has announced strategic investment and control, via Reliance Jio, of two of India’s leading cable and data-carrying companies, Hathway Cable & Datacom and Den Networks. RIL is already one of India’s leading producers of television programming, with 44 television channels, including general and business news, in English and vernacular languages, entertainment, music, regional entertainment, children’s educational and entertainment networks. This raises a serious theoretical and moral issue: if a content provider also controls the cables and other channels through which content is transmitted, can it deny access to competing broadcasters and assume a monopoly position in the market?

The answer is complex and there is a thicket of rules and regulations formed at different times by governments, America’s regulator FCC, India’s Trai and various courts. This is perhaps inevitable because radio, TV and online technology have moved faster than rules. However, one broad overriding principle is that content and carriage should be kept separate and there should be ownership/control limits of content companies on carriage companies and vice versa. If any broadcaster wants access to any sort of carriage network, on mutually agreed terms, it is a fair deal. Regulators and courts will have to ensure that the RIL deal does not violate the content-carriage separation principles and rules, for healthy competition in the broadcasting and the more general content business.

When 5G arrives, telecom networks’ capacity to deliver content will also increase manifold. In that RIL will be a major player. Net neutrality principles — no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritisation — must prevail in the entire carriage business. It would be in the interest of all players, including RIL.