Draft telecom Bill: Trai to dial PMO over dilution of powers

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will strategy the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to current its case in opposition to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) transfer to considerably dilute its powers within the draft telecom Bill. The Authority can also be within the technique of writing to the DoT highlighting its opposition to a number of clauses within the new Bill, which nearly make it a rubber stamp of the federal government.

According to sources, the telecom regulator plans to make an in depth presentation to the PMO exhibiting how investor confidence and ease of doing enterprise would get damage if Trai’s powers are whittled down. Three principal areas — tariffs, high quality of service requirements and dispute decision mechanism — the place the federal government has encroached upon the powers of the regulator in addition to the appellate tribunal are more likely to determine within the presentation.

The Trai is of the view that there could be opposed ramifications if the Bill will get enacted as a legislation in its present format, particularly with regard to regulation of tariff – an space the place the federal government at the moment has no energy. The Bill proposes that together with the regulator, even the federal government would have the facility with regard to tariffs and might overrule any transfer taken by the regulator. For occasion, any tariff order issued by the Trai should be suitably amended if the federal government takes a stance which is diametrically reverse to that of the regulator. This would mainly make the federal government a licensor, an operator (it owns BSNL/MTNL), in addition to a regulator.

For occasion, immediately Trai has put telecom tariffs beneath forbearance, that means telecom operators are free to plot their tariff packages and implement them to date they file the identical with the regulator inside every week of implementation. If the Trai finds something objectionable, it directs the operator involved to make appropriate modifications, however operators don’t want its approval earlier than implementing any new tariff package deal. However, beneath the draft Bill, if the federal government feels that the coverage on forbearance must be modified, it may go forward and do it and the Trai must abide by it.

“This would completely erode investor confidence as there would be no predictability in the regulatory regime. The Trai takes measures after an open consultative process, but the Bill has not laid down any clauses which mandates the government also to do the same,” a supply advised FE.

The authorities has additionally encroached upon the regulator’s powers on laying down high quality of requirements of service and monitoring it. Under the Bill, the federal government will even have the powers to do the identical and if there’s a divergence, the federal government’s view would prevail. So topics like name drops, spam messages and calls, and so forth, will transfer to the federal government’s area.

The third space is with regard to decision of disputes the place the powers of the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) get redundant. Currently, TDSAT is the primary physique which appears into any dispute between two telecom operators, telecom operators and the federal government, and between operators, the federal government and in addition to the regulator. Only as soon as the TDSAT has handed orders on such disputes can they be appealed within the Supreme Court. The draft Bill modifications this by empowering the federal government to provide you with alternate dispute decision mechanism.

“If the Central government is of the opinion that any dispute, or class of disputes, may be resolved more appropriately by arbitration, mediation or other process of dispute resolution, then the Central government may establish a suitable mechanism for resolution of such disputes,” reads the clause on this regard.

As reported earlier, the draft Bill additionally seeks to amend Section 11 of the Trai Act, 1997, which lays down that on measures like licensing, new providers and spectrum administration, the place the powers vest with the federal government, for any new measure or modifications, the federal government first wants to hunt the suggestions of the Trai. If the Bill turns into a legislation in its present format, this could not be necessary on the federal government’s half. It could or could not search the regulator’s suggestions, thus eroding the transparency which was constructed within the technique of policymaking. FE