MUMBAI: Indian telecom regulator TRAI has sought inputs from stakeholders on “Ease of Doing Telecom Business in India”.
Promoting “ease of doing business” is amongst the priority work items for unhindered growth of the telecom sector. A number of steps have already been taken for ease of doing business. Steps like adoption of market based spectrum management such as assignment of spectrum through auction, permitting spectrum trading, spectrum sharing and liberalisation of administratively assigned spectrum, Unified Licensing regime, Merger and Acquisition guidelines, Virtual Network Operation etc. have been guided by the principles of “ease of doing business”.
The stakeholders have been requested to provide inputs with detailed explanation and justification by 11 April 2017. On receipt of the inputs, TRAI will analyse them and if required, take further necessary action for simplification of processes.
Further, the Authority is of the opinion that various processes that a telecom licensee is required to go through, should be simplified and combined to the extent possible to economise on efforts on part of the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) as well as the Government. Therefore, it is important to identify the bottlenecks, obstacles or hindrances that are making it difficult to do telecom business in India and thus, require regulatory intervention.
Some of these processes could be:
Related to Unified Licence
* Acquiring Unified Licence, Compliance of various general / commercial /
technical / financial / operating / commercial conditions.
* Adding new authorisations in the UL
* Surrendering any authorisation within the scope of UL or surrender of UL.
* Compliance of roll-out obligations
* Payment of Licence Fee, FBG/PBG and the release of bank guarantee, whenever due.
* Any other issue
Spectrum Allotment and use
* Assignment of spectrum to the successful bidder by WPC
* SACFA Clearance Process
* Spectrum Trading approval process settlement of dues etc.
* Spectrum Sharing process
* Liberalisation of spectrum process
* Any other issue
Provision of telecom services using Satellite media
* Clearances from INSAT Network Operations Control
Center (NOCC)
* Obtaining SACFA clearance and clearance from other
authorities
* Any other issue
Merger and Acquisition Policy
In addition, there can be processes in other areas which may be requiring simplification. In view of the above, the stakeholders are requested to identify such areas of concern and review the existing processes and suggest mechanisms that ease the business activity.
