DoT declines Trai proposal to bring cloud services under its ambit

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has declined to regulate cloud service providers (CSPs) like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, among others, an Economic Times (ET) report said. Earlier, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had sent the DoT a proposal to bring such service providers under its regulatory apparatus.

Clarifying its decision, the DoT officials aware of the matter said that such entities come under the ambit of the Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology (Meity) and that arrangement should be continued, the report added.

Quoting the officials, ET said that Trai's 2020 recommendations on the matter were examined and the department decided to go against accepting them.

Previously, the firms engaged in the cloud services industry as well as technology and telecom players had expressed their concerns against Trai's recommendations. They had written to the DoT explaining that the services were not in the category of telecommunications.

Given the opposition from telecom operators as well as the CSPs, the  Department of Telecom decided to go against Trai's recommendations. The decision entails that no new policy or regulations for CSPs will be introduced and the existing framework will continue.

Also, a number of industry associations had also said that creating an additional regulatory framework will be harmful to investments in the cloud sector, ET reported.

Several organisations including Nasscom, Cellular Operators Association of India, Information Technology Industry Council, etc had written to the DoT that CSPs were different than telecom operators and that the department should not regulate them. In doing so, they also informed the DoT that Meity was already regulating CSPs and that a regulatory framework for the purpose was in place.