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Tag: unified licensing regime

  • Trai makes case for unified licensing regime

    NEW DELHI: Telecom and broadcast regulator Trai today made a strong case for introduction of unified licensing regime in the country, which, it said, would help in unification of networks and services like telecom, broadcasting and Internet leading to advanced and cheaper services to customers through Next Generation Networks or NGN.

    “Telephony, data or television services had separate networks. With the efficient and cheaper IP technology forcing telecommunications networks to migrate to NGN, triple play would become common and would not be a value added service. Traffic of different services of data, television and subsequently voice would be simply enclosed in Internet protocol packets, transmitted over these networks, ” Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said in paper on NGN.

    The regulator argued that just like access problems were sorted out through a unified access service licence, “if we are to move further towards convergence, we have to be in a unified licensing regime.”

    Pointing out that “unless license conditions and regulations are light handed, it would be virtually impossible to regulate”, the Trai paper said an unified licence can easily deal with the converging technologies, carriage, service and platform.

    The transition would be difficult but would bring with it the benefits to the Indian and mainly the rural economy.

    “Such (NG) networks would be advantageous, particularly for rural areas where there is huge demand for information, telecom, TV and video and if these services could be delivered at cheap prices, the market would be huge,” the paper said, adding India is the only country in world where cable TV connections are more than fixed line telephones and such networks would open up the possibility of delivery of cable TV channels in rural areas.

    The unified licence would give an opportunity to service providers to innovate towards the best solution. Another option could be to bring a converged regime through a Convergence Act, Trai said.

    Trai’s recommendations on unified licensing regimes are pending with the department of telecom for quite some time now.

    The detailed NGN study paper is available on the regulator’s site, www.trai.gov.in.

    Also read:
    Trai publishes list of pay, FTA channels

  • TRAI issues fresh recommendations on unified licensing regime

    NEW DELHI: In its new set of recommendations for Unified Licence, Trai has reduced the revenue share licence fee from 15 percent to 6 per cent of the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) with no revenue share and/or entry fee for a number of services.

    The framework for the new regime has four categories with Unified Licence at the highest hierarchical level followed by Class licence, Licensing through authorisation and Standalone broadcasting and cable TV licence.

    According to a Trai release Unified Licensing will allow any licensee to provide any or all telecom services by acquiring a single license. It may be a matter of relief for service specific licensees as Trai recommends an optional migration at this stage making it mandatory only after 5 years.

    Under the proposed regime, Internet telephony, including IP enabled services, will be allowed to Unified Licensee and Niche operators. With an objective to enhance rural teledensity (less than 1 per cent) Niche operators will be permitted to provide all services without any entry fee. With Internet telephony, India will join the group of 80 countries where the Internet telephony service is permissible.

    TVis-?-vis broadcasting services, stand alone licenses would be issued under the prevailing process of issuing such licenses by the I&B ministry. This includes allocation of spectrum in consultation with WPC. Whereas if a unified licensee wants to offer broadcasting service, the licensee will have to apply to the I&B ministry in case such clearance is required and fulfil other requirements as prescribed. The content of such a broadcast in any case, would be regulated by the I&B Ministry.

    As regards to the service specific licensing regime, validity of these licenses will continue up till two years of implementation of the Unified Licensing regime whereafter the specific service provider will have switch over to a Unified Licence. According to Trai after two years of implementation of the proposed recommendations all new service providers shall be licensed under the new regime.

    Nonetheless, benefits of Unified Licensing regime will facilitate customers to access all telecom services including voice, data, cable TV, D-T-H and radio broadcasting through a single wire or wireless medium from a Unified license operator at affordable prices.