TRAI: back to the future

Ram Sevak Sharma is set to take charge on Monday as the chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). His tenure as the telecom regulator will be for three years. Sharma, who took voluntary retirement as secretary in the department of electronics and information technology this month, is known for his role in the government's ambitious Aadhaar project, where he worked closely with Nandan Nilekani. He also played an important role in the Prime Minister's Digital India initiative. The 1978-batch IAS officer of the Jharkhand cadre holds a master's degree in mathematics from IIT-Kanpur and a master's in computer science from the University of California, Riverside. Business Standard takes a look at the important issues that would require his attention after succeeding Rahul Khullar, who retired in mid-May this year

Net-neutrality: Telecom players vs over the top (OTT) players

• A recent report by an internal panel of the department of telecommunications (DoT) recommended domestic voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls offered by WhatsApp, Skype and Viber be regulated, in line with voice calls offered by telecom operators. However, it said there was no case for prescribing regulatory oversight on these firms' overall operations
• Telcos, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, have been demanding there be similar regulation for similar services. There has been a raging debate on the issue on social media
• Trai had started a consultation process for regulation of OTT services during the time of Khullar, where the regulator received more than a million comments. However, Khullar retired before recommendations were made on the issue

Call drops

• There have been rising complaints of call drops. Though, Trai data show the telecom players meet benchmarks prescribed on call drops, many steps need to be taken to resolve the issues
• Call drops happen because of various issues - fewer towers, lack of spectrum, fear of radiation - due to which many resident welfare bodies do not allow towers on their campuses
• DoT had asked Trai to work out an incentive/disincentive mechanism on call drops. Uninor is the only operator that compensates its users: For every call drop, a minute is credited to the account concerned

Spectrum pricing

• Government is planning another round of spectrum auctions - for 2G, 3G & 4G spectrum and 700 MHz spectrum- early next year
• DoT has asked Trai to propose the reserve price for spectrum in the bands of 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz (to be used for 2G services), 2,100 MHz for 3G and 2300 MHz and 2,500 MHz for 4G and 700 MHz. This year, the government earned revenues of Rs 1,10,000 lakh crore from the auction of spectrum in the bands for 2G, 3G and 4G services