Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Chairman Ram Sewak Sharma spoke to The Sunday Guardian and talked on a range of issues from the key priorities of the sector regulator in this calendar year to the recommendations made to the government for the implementation of Bharatnet project, which aims to deploy high-speed optical fibre cables across rural areas of the country. Excerpts:
Q. TRAI has been very proactive in issuing several consultation papers lately. What are your few regulatory priorities in this calendar year?
A. Our overarching principle is to regulate the sector to ensure consumer protection, quality of service, transparency, growth of the sector and a level playing field for stakeholders. In the beginning of this year we had called the consultation with the stakeholders and identified six to seven issues both in the telecom broadcast sector.
Q. What are these key issues?
A. One of the major issues is to review the certain regulations to scrutinise certain regulations and orders that were issued decades ago. For this we will form a committee of stakeholders and seek their recommendations. We are also focusing on ease of doing business. In consultation with the stakeholders we are studying the processes that are perceived as redundant, harassing, and cumbersome and can be weeded out. We will also be reviewing the overall Tariff framework to ascertain fair play in the market.
Q. Where do we stand at call dropping issue?
A. Firstly, after the order of the TRAI was struck down by the Supreme Court we realised that while TRAI had the power to prescribe Quality of Service (QoS), it does not have the power to enforce it in the sense it cannot penalise in case of violations. There is a lack of recourse in the law and the only recourse that we do have is that to file a complaint against the Chief Judicial Magistrate. We have recommended to the government to make certain amendments in the law. Secondly, we ourselves are reviewing the QoS norms. Thirdly, we are trying to bring in more transparency in the quality of service. For instance we have launched myspeed app, a crowd sourced application that allows users to send their speed test, signal strength, network information results to the regulatory body. We are also carrying out tower wise call drop mapping on the analytics portal of TRAI. We conduct drive tests both independently and with the operators. All these measures are to help the consumers to choose the best service provider in their area.
Q. Under the Prime Minister’s Digital India initiative, the government has envisioned providing internet connectivity to over 2.5 lakh gram panchayats encompassing close to six lakh villages by 2018. What are the priorities which should be addressed to achieve this target?
A. Broadband proliferation is very important in order to extend digital connectivity to over 2.5 lakh gram panchayats. In view of this, we have made a few recommendations to the government like upgradation of the digitised TV framework by providing broadband to 100 million homes and tweaking the licensing framework to enable 800,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. We have also recommended the implementation BharatNet in the Public Private Partnership mode through BOOT model.
Q. What is BOOT model?
A. BOOT stands for Build, Own, Operate and Transfer or continue. In this model the private player will come up with various packages and applications like virtual classrooms or entertainment to sell its bandwidth. Furthermore, by implementing this model government will not have to bear the burden of maintenance. The alignment of interest will also push the private players to maintain the structure or there will be risk of violating service-level agreements (SLAs). In totality, we believe that the PPP mode will go a long way in effective implementation and sustenance of the huge digital structure that the government is keen on building.