ASSOCHAM presents telecom demands to new DoT secretary

NEW DELHI, INDIA: At a formal meeting to felicitate and welcome the new telecom secretary, and Chairman, Telecom Commission, MF Farooqui, ASSOCHAM presented its's list of expectations from the Government.

In his opening remarks, Rajkumar Dhoot, MP, and ASSOCHAM president said that "telecom industry has been facing some challenges, which need immediate attention of the government, otherwise the problems will continue to multiply". In a short a crisp presentation, TV Ramachadran elaborated on the contribution of telecom in the growth of Indian economy, and said that it is essential that the industry and the Government works together like partners.

Speaking on need for meaningful spectrum auction, Dr DPS Seth, former CMD BSNL and former Member TRAI, said that "successful auction is the need of the hour. High reserve prices need to be reviewed to enable robust participation. The successful auction should enable robust participation because, the spectrum left idle or unsold is an irretrievable loss to the socio-economy.

Another area of concern is the EMF and tower issues. Speaking on this area of concern, Rajan Mathews, Director General, COAI, said that "There is an urgent need to urgently notify uniform tower guide-lines. An advisory from Union to all States should go, to align with uniform guidelines of DoT. Lastly, he said, there must be reasonable targets for the green telecom.

On the issue of penalties that is so frequently levied on operators, Ashok Sud said that the Government must apply the test of reasonableness and proportionality should be applied to. He also spoke about the dire need to bring in the appellate model at the DoT level to handle these cases.

On the issue of e-KYC based or Adhaar based authentication, which has become a big problem as operators move to the bottom of the pyramid to get new subscribers, Amit Mathur of Reliance Communications said that KYC norms are now becoming a hurdle, and talked about some new authentication verification and authentication models that can be used that will also simplify enrolment by cutting away unnecessary documentation.

Besides, these, some others demands put forth included the need to create incentives for eco-system, and to address financial disability for PMA to help rather than hurt. ASSOCHAM said we believe that domestic manufacturing should be encouraged, but there is need to focus at a portfolio of products where supply chains operate globally.

The industry association also requested the Secretary to amend policies keeping in mind new enterprise opportunities and technologies like M2M and Cloud. The M2M KYC norms should be designed keeping machines in mind. And that license conditions should be designed in a way to permit service providers to leverage the benefits of the Cloud services.

On the subject of taxes and levies on handset manufacturers, ASSOCHAM believes that excise duty and the NCCD duty, hikes handset prices and this helps increase grey market. This should be reviewed. Lastly infrastructure status for the telecom service sector is a major area of concern. Even though the telecom services/IP-1s are brought under the ambit, but ambiguity remains with respect to what benefits accrue and how. ASSOCHAM demanded that RBI and MoF should open up various financing options from institutions like IIFCL, IDFC.

As expected, the telecom secretary Farooqui, did not make any commitments, and has promised to look into each one of these demands seriously and take suitable action at appropriate levels.