Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Oct 19, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Oct 19, 2004 |
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Info-Tech
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Telecommunications TRAI explores sops for rural connectivity Our Bureau
(From left) Mr D.P.S. Seth, Member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; Mr Umang Das, Chairman, Communications Convergence Committee; Mr Pradip Baijal, Chairman, TRAI; and Mr Mahendra K. Sanghi, President, Assocham, at an interactive session in the Capital on Monday. - Kamal Narang
New Delhi , Oct. 18 THE Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is bringing out a consultation paper on promoting rural connectivity in the country. The paper would look at ways to offer incentives to operators for offering telecom services in rural areas. The telecom regulator also said it was not in favour of adopting a revenue-share formula for collecting access deficit charges (ADC) from the operators. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference on telecom policy initiatives, organised by Assocham, the TRAI Chairman, Mr Pradip Baijal, said, "We are looking at various ways to offer concessions to operators offering rural connectivity such as waiving the spectrum charges and reduced licence fee. The consultation paper will be released in the next few days." On the issue of ADC, Mr Baijal said Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd was opposed to the idea of imposing the charges as part of revenue share instead of the current regime of loading the levy on call-to-call basis. "We may move to a revenue-sharing model next time when we review the ADC regime. We will for now continue with the existing regime," Mr Baijal said. ADC is a form of a levy collected from every call to support rural telephony. BSNL, being the largest rural operator, gets a huge chunk of the kitty. Mr Baijal said the regulator could not ignore the concerns raised by the incumbent BSNL. "No regulator can ignore the incumbent's concerns. We have to value the view of the incumbents. "However, we have in the past taken decisions such as lowering the ADC amount even though BSNL was against it," Mr Baijal said. In another initiative, TRAI said it could request the local municipal authorities in different States to relax norms for putting up mobile towers. Mobile operators complained that local municipal authorities were creating bottlenecks when it came to giving clearance for setting up mobile towers.
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