India - Telecommunications Regulatory Overview to 2010

Synopsis

The Indian government has been continuing to push to complete the restructuring of the telecommunications regulatory regime. Some years back the corporatisation of the operational arm of DoT to form BSNL set the scene for the industry to move forward. The subsequent opening up of the market to full scale competition has been dramatic, to say the least. However, some major inconsistencies remain. The introduction of a Unified Licensing regime has gone part of the way towards resolving these inconsistencies. This report takes a broad look at the evolving regulatory landscape, together with the liberalisation and privatisation steps that are already changing the sector.

Note: This is an archived report and has not been updated since 2010.

Table of Contents

• 1. Synopsis
• 2. Regulatory environment
  • 2.1 Telecommunications authorities
    • 2.1.1 Ministry for Communications (MoC)
    • 2.1.2 Department of Telecommunications (DoT)
    • 2.1.3 Telecom Commission
    • 2.1.4 Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)
    • 2.1.5 Telecom Dispute Settlement & Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT)
    • 2.1.6 Telecom Sector Ombudsman (TSO)
  • 2.2 Regulatory development
    • 2.2.1 Licensing circles
    • 2.2.2 Licence fees and taxes
  • 2.3 National Telecom Policies
    • 2.3.1 National Telecom Policies 1999 (NTP-99)
    • 2.3.2 Addendum to NTP-99
    • 2.3.3 Proposed new National Telecom Policy
    • 2.3.4 National Broadband Policy 2004
  • 2.4 Foreign investment
  • 2.5 National security
    • 2.5.1 Dispute over import of Chinese equipment
  • 2.6 Offshore investment
  • 2.7 Regulatory reforms
    • 2.7.1 Overview
    • 2.7.2 Access Deficit Charge (ADC)
    • 2.7.3 Quality of Service (QoS)
    • 2.7.4 Local Loop Unbundling (LLU)
    • 2.7.5 Conditional Access System (CAS)
    • 2.7.6 Unified Access Services Licence (UASL)
  • 2.8 Regulatory issues
    • 2.8.1 Basic Telephone Service (BTS) licensing guidelines
    • 2.8.2 Development of basic service sector
    • 2.8.3 National Long-Distance (NLD)
    • 2.8.4 International Long-Distance (ILD)
    • 2.8.5 ‘Fixed’ mobile
    • 2.8.6 Basic service tariffs
• 3. Related reports

• Table 1 – Number of telecom licences issued by category – 2007 - 2008

• Exhibit 1 – Overview of FDI policy for India’s telecom sector - 2009