CCI: Jurisdiction overlap must be harmonised for strong choices

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has known as for formal and casual traces of communication between the Telecom Department, telecom sector regulator Trai, the antitrust physique and the envisaged Data Protection Authority to make sure strong and constant regulatory choices in a “complex data-centric converged” telecom business.
The CCI, in its key observations and findings of the telecom sector’s market examine carried out by ICRIER, additionally notes the battle between permitting entry and defending shopper privateness.
The competitors regulator stated that abuse of dominance can take the type of reducing the privateness safety and, subsequently, fall inside the ambit of antitrust as low privateness customary implies lack of shopper welfare.
“Privacy can take the form of non-price competition. In the era of data aggregation, competition analysis must also focus on the extent to which a consumer can ‘freely consent’ to action by a dominant player,” the Competition Commission stated in its report.
Further, based on a senior CCI official, the regulator is probably going to have a look at options reminiscent of knowledge portability as a method of making certain that a number of corporations holding important quantity of information doesn’t lead to entry obstacles for contemporary entrants into this rising sector.
Additionally, for the digital sector, the CCI is seeking to transfer away from a turnover-based threshold to a deal value-based threshold for corporations to inform the regulator in case of a merger and/or acquisition (M&A).

The official stated that within the digital sector, the asset/turnover-based notification thresholds have left potential enforcement gaps on condition that the businesses being acquired might function on a zero or low turnover, or an asset-light mannequin.
To this extent, the competitors watchdog has initiated one other examine on M&A offers within the digital markets to trace the non-notified offers.
This is being completed with an goal to determine tendencies and patterns of such transactions to offer an empirical foundation for a legislative modification to herald the deal-value based mostly threshold for the digital sector.
However, with regard to the telecom sector, the CCI has noticed from the market examine that the antitrust regulation framework is broad sufficient “to address the exploitative and exclusionary behaviour arising out of privacy standards, of entities commanding market power”.
“While overlapping jurisdiction between institutions cannot be completely eliminated, it ought to be harmonised through better regulatory design and improved lines of communication,” it famous, including the CCI will stay the physique to resolve antitrust and competitors associated points.