Re: India regulator pillories Facebook over Free Basics lobbying - BBC news

Vickram Crishna <v1clist-/[email protected]> Sat, 23 Jan 2016 07:21:35 +0000 (UTC)

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Vickramhttp://communicall.wordpress.comhttp://vvcrishna.wordpress.com

On Friday, 22 January 2016, 18:51, parminder <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Arun

Nice to be conversing with you again!

Yes, TRAI mostly only gives recommendations. But that is as true about net neutrality, the storm that is currently blowing, as it would be about possible platform abuse by Facebook... Last year TRAI gave its recommendations on issues of media control, paid news, vertical integration, media plurality and the such, it is report on "Issues related to media ownership". Yes, these are only recommendations to the government, but they can carry a lot of weight.
With due respect, Parminder, there is an issue about having institutionalised forms of quasi-governance. Either somebody has a responsibility and authority, or not. Carrying a lot of weight is meaningful in the case of an oversight board, which may not be able to issue letters of dismissal to errant executive board members, but can certainly put them to shame and alert shareholders as well. It is meaningless for government today, in India, which is already drowned in voices (most of whom seem to be shouting). Having a TRAI sound off like a kindly grandfather is neither here nor there. In fact, simply sounding off is a problem in itself. It highlights the fact that the administration is fumbling to allocate meaningful responsibilities - those that are meaningful to the public purpose, that is.

parminder

On Friday 22 January 2016 01:21 PM, Arun Mehta wrote:

Read carefully, Kirit. TRAI can recommend all it wants, the government is not obliged to listen to them, as we know from the past. The only regulatory enforcement TRAI talks about is with regard to tariffs. Arun Mehta
On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Kiritkumar Lathia <[email protected]> wrote:

Arun,
TRAI is much more than what you suggest. From their 2013-2014 annual report, I quote:
" ... An important aspect of TRAI’s functions as mandated under the TRAI Act is to make recommendations to the Government on diverse subjects including market structure and entry of new operators in the sector, the licencing framework, management of scarce resources such as spectrum, consumer safety and security. Under this mandate, several significant policy regulatory recommendations were made during the year which include Recommendations on ‘Valuation and Reserve Price of Spectrum for Auction in different bands of spectrum’, ‘Full Mobile Number Portability’ ‘Availability of Spectrum’, ‘Liberalization of Usage’, ‘Spectrum Usage Charges’, ‘Spectrum Trading’ etc.
... The mobile phone is rapidly emerging as a useful instrument for customers to conduct financial transactions. TRAI has assumed a facilitative role in the endeavour to leverage the mobile phone for financial inclusion of India’s vast population. TRAI has, over the past year, arranged for banks and TSPs to have detailed consultations for working together on this important national project. Recognising the need for regulatory intervention to set the process in motion, the Mobile Banking (Quality of Service) Regulation has been amended to direct all TSPs to facilitate Integrated Voice Response (IVR), Short Message Service (SMS) and Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) based connectivity to banks and their authorised agents for mobile banking services.
... Regulatory enforcement is an integral aspect of the functioning of TRAI. To ensure better enforcement, various regulations and orders has been issued prescribing financial disincentives for infringements such as wrong rejection of porting requests; failure to comply with tariff reporting requirements or levy of excess charges on consumers in violation of the provisions of the Telecommunications Tariff Order (TTO); delay in submission of or for submission of false information in Accounting Separation Reports; non-compliance with the benchmarks for Network Service Quality Parameters and Customer Service Quality Parameters; failure to meet the prescribed Quality of Service benchmarks for broadband services etc. "
It also deals with the broadcasting sector including IPTV.
FB (as new operator) public enquiry is part of the TRAI work and the abuse of their platform to their advantage is TRAI's issue as well. However, who issues the actual licence? DoT? Because this - non-abuse of platform - of their platform and dominant position should be part of the licencing terms and conditions.
So Parminder is correct in formally pointing out to TRAI about the above mentioned abuse.
The full (20Mb) report is at : http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/UserFiles/Documents/AnuualReports/TRAI-Annual-Report-(English)=01042015.pdf
best wishes, Kirit

On 22 January 2016 at 07:41, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote:

Yeah, it does help to be clear about the actual roles and mandates a regulator, or any other policy body (ICANN for example) has.

--srs
On 22-Jan-2016, at 11:35 AM, Arun Mehta <[email protected]> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 6:44 PM, parminder <[email protected]> wrote:

I think, TRAI should be formally approached to examine this case and ban such political campaigns by platform owners, when such a platform is of a monopolistic character as FB is.

Hi Parminder, glad to see you here. Once again: the TRAI has no such powers. It only has powers with regard to tariffs.
Arun Mehta

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