TRAI issues draft recommendations for ease of doing business to promote growth in telecom sector

Aiming to promote unhindered growth in the telecom sector, the regulator on Tuesday released draft recommendations for ease of doing telecom business. “Promoting ’ease of doing business’ is essential for unhindered growth of the telecom sector and is amongst the priority items for the government. A number of steps have already been taken for ease of doing telecom business by the government,” the sector regulator said in a statement. [caption id=“attachment_4060553” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image: PTI[/caption] “With the change in the policies over a period of time or with the technological development, there could be some processes, which may have become redundant or may be executed in an efficient andtransparent way,” it added. The draft recommendations on “Ease of Doing Telecom Business” have been put on the website of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( **TRAI** ) and stakeholders have been invited to comment or make suggestions by October 3, 2017. Counter comments will be allowed till October 10, 2017. Regarding merger and acquisitions (M and A) guidelines, the TRAI said the current provisions of M and A guidelines do not define a red-line for the market share of the resultant entity in a service area. “Therefore, DoT (Department of Telecom) should define a cap on the permissible market share of the merging entities taken together; beyond which merger proposal should not be accepted.” Among other recommendations, the telecom watchdog said that for an existing service provider, for renewal of licence or migration of its licence to Unified Licence (UL), the condition of minimum net worth should not be applicable. The Authority recommended that in respect of electro-magnetic field (EMF) compliance, DoT may review the need of calling biennial certification for all the existing sites of every telecom service provider (TSP). It said that TSPs should be asked to submit all requisite certifications only through the Sanchar Tarang portal. The TRAI recommended that DoT should devise a suitable matrix, linking the penalty to the severity of the incident and the number of occurrences of the violation for imposition of financial penalties.