A Digital India
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that has just released draft Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Repealing Regulations, 2023; for inviting comments of stakeholders.
The TRAI notified regulation on quality of service of dial-up and leased line internet access service, 2001 (4 of 2001) on 10th December 2001. This regulation is applicable to all the Basic Service Operators and Internet Service Providers, including the incumbent operators viz. BSNL, MTNL and VSNL. The purpose of laying down Quality of Service Parameters was to ensure customer satisfaction by laying down norms of network performance, which the service provider is required to achieve by proper dimensioning of his network; measure the Quality of Service from time to time and to compare that with the specified norms so as to monitor the level of performance, provided by various service providers and to protect the interests of subscribers of the Internet services.
It has been noticed that these regulations were issued when the dial up service was the only service available for accessing low speed internet. With the passage of time, the telecommunication networks both wireline as well as wireless have evolved to offer high speed broadband service on xDSL, FTTH, LTE, etc, technologies. Whereas the leased line access services are generally offered by Internet Gateway Service Providers (IGSPs) holding an ISP licence to enterprises, is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) based service. Being SLA based service, the agreement among the contracting parties has sufficient provisions to safeguard concerns regarding service quality. Hence, the regulation on quality of service of dial-up and leased line internet access service, 2001, appears to be no more relevant in the present context.
In view of the above, the Authority intends to repeal the Regulation on quality of service of dial-up and leased line internet access service, 2001 (4 of 2001) with effect from the date of its notification in the Official Gazette.
The draft Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Repealing Regulations, 2022 regulation is available on TRAI website www.trai.gov.in and shall be open for comments of the stakeholders up to 17th April 2023.
It may be noted that the Digital India programme launched by Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy has achieved a milestone, which was highlighted in the vision of the government of India through various measures taken up for the growth of the TMT sector. The key areas in discussion in the programme are broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, a public internet access programme, e-governance, electronic delivery of services, and electronics manufacturing.
The government of India, in its budget for the year 2022–23 highlighted that the required spectrum auctions will be conducted in 2022 to facilitate rollout of 5G mobile services within 2022–23 by private telecom providers, which was conducted in August 2022. In the Union Budget of 2022–23, the Cabinet allocated an amount of 845,870 million rupees to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
In April 2022, the government of India launched the Digital India RISC-V programme (DIR-V), wherein, India will create microprocessors for India’s focus on mobility, computing and digitisation. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras in collaboration with MeitY has already developed two microprocessor, Vega (64 bit) and Shakti (32 bit) for open-source architecture.
Under the Policy on Open Standards for e-governance, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has been assigned the responsibility for formulating standards for e-governance systems in India. All projects under e-governance (government to government (G2G), government to business (G2B), and government to citizen (G2C) adhere to this policy.
The Indian over-the-top (OTT) market is actively scaling, with significant investment being made in both original and premium content, as well as robust subscription growth. With over 40 competitors, the Indian OTT market is one of the most competitive among growing markets. While there have been discussions about people turning away from TV, this has not yet occurred in India on a significant scale.
In fact, the day is not too far off, thanks to increasing digitisation efforts, when India will accept the latest technologies such as internet via satellite, data science, and so on. India’s telecom journey has, without a doubt, moved forward from telegraph communication.
