Govt Should Act On TRAI Proposals Within Time Frame, Else Pointless"

Even as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) keeps dishing out recommendations, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) seems to be sleeping on most of them. [via Mint] Apparently, of the 25 recommendations made in the last three years, the DoT has taken action on just 11.

“If the government has to take all the decisions, what is the point of (having) Trai,” asks Smita Jha, principal analyst for the media and broadcast industry with consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers in New Delhi. Vishal Malhotra, a New Delhi-based partner with consultant Ernst & Young, rightly points out for the need of a time frame. While the law spells out the amount of time—typically, two to three months—for Trai to make its recommendations, there is no such time frame for the government to spell out its stance on the regulator’s suggestions.

Here’s an example. Eighteen months after the recommendation was made, industry body Association of Unified Service Providers of India (Auspi) is still “following up to now what has happened to the number portability recommendations”, says its secretary general S.C. Khanna. Auspi represents CDMA (short for code division multiple access) and private landline operators. The recommendation, which sought to allow users to retain their numbers if they switched operators, was issued by Trai in March 2006 and has been “kept in abeyance”, according to a recent statement by information technology and communications minister Andimuthu Raja. No other response or reaction has so far been given to Trai on the fate of the suggestions.