Trai views on promoting telecom equipment mfg in 1 month

Telecom regulator Trai today said it hopes to finalise in about a month the recommendations on promoting telecom equipment manufacturing in the country.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) held open house discussions with industry representatives on the issue today.

"I think we will take about a month or so to firm up our views on this," Trai Chairman, R S Sharma told reporters after the open house meeting.

The deliberations revolved around short to long term policy measures that are required to boost innovation and productivity of local telecom manufacturing.

In its consultation paper issued in September last year, Trai had also asked whether patent laws as also mechanism for certification and testing in India were sufficient to address the issues of local manufacturers.

It had also sought industry's suggestions on fiscal incentives that can propel domestic manufacturing in telecom.

"While the mobile handset manufacturing industry has shown good progress in the past five years, the telecom equipment manufacturing industry has not been able to match the performance of mobile handset manufacturing industry," the consultation paper had noted.

Other aspects that were thrown up by Trai for discussion as part of the consultation paper included identification of issues under ITA (IT Agreement) which need to be addressed for making the local manufacturing more competitive, and whether an export oriented approach should be adopted in this sector.