Trai wants govt approval of unified licensing recomendations

New Delhi, Mar 20 (UNI) To enable the blurring of boundaries between telecommunications and broadcasting, the telecom regulator today said the unified licensing recommendations sent to the government should be approved at the earliest to help reduce the licence fee for domestic and long distance operations from Rs 107 crores to Rs five crore.

The Telecom Regulatery Authority of India (TRAI) said in a statement here that there should be converged regulatory regime and the starting point for this exercise should be the Communications Convergence Bill, 2001.

However, several changes need to be made in this Bill.

Content regulation should be kept out of the purview of the converged regulator. The division of powers between the Government, TDSAT and TRAI should also broadly correspond to the prevailing position at present.

The unified licensing recommendations already sent to the Government, should be approved at the earliest. However, there should be reduction in the entry fee to reflect the changes made in the entry fee for NLD/ILD licence.

This entry fee should come down to Rs 5 crore against Rs 107 crore recommended earlier and this should further reduce to Rs 30 lakh after 5 years as recommended.

There should be greater flexibility in spectrum allocation to take full advantage of new services and new technologies for existing services that may evolve with time.

The Authority has also made a number of recommendations based on the report of the committee constituted under the aegis of TRAI along with other stakeholders to suggest ways and means to promote broadband based services over cable TV networks. These recommendations cover the areas including Rationalisation of Differential Custom Duty Regime, Restriction on use of Protocols, Institutional funding, FDI Limits and Right of Way.

''It is necessary for the legal and regulatory framework to adapt to this convergence and actively promote such convergence.

This would also help in facilitating competition,'' TRAI said.

The Authority has so far tried to meet the challenges of convergence by making recommendations for a unified licensing regime. It is, however, clear that to reap the full benefits of convergence, it would be necessary to go beyond unified licensing, TRAI said.

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