Report on CPP by December, says TRAI chief

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, AUG. 28. The recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which is holding an open house discussion on issues relating to the introduction of ``calling party pays'' (CPP) for cellular mobile services in major cities, will be finalised by December.

This was stated here on Tuesday by Mr. M.S.Verma, Chairperson of TRAI. Mr. Verma, who attended the first open house discussion, told presspersons that similar sessions would be held in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi and the consultation process would be over by the end of September or early October.

Mr. Verma referred to several changes that had taken place not only in the country, but worldwide in the past two years and said the mobile network, which had a few lakh connections, had grown to have several million connections. There were more players in the field now and the telephone density had gone up from 2.5 to 3.2. Hence, the TRAI was going into the matter de novo.

The TRAI was shortly going into another consultation about the premises and based on which international telephony could be opened probably by April 2002 and then for tariff rebalancing once again when the tariff could come down further for overseas and long distance calls.

Mr. Verma said there was also a move to introduce Voice Over Internet protocol (VOIP). However, a time frame could not be given for it.

To a question, Mr. Verma said one of the main responsibilities of TRAI was to facilitate competition. But he wanted the operators not to take any step by which the competition would become discriminatory and price predatory.

The TRAI had posed 21 issues such as the desirability of the CPP in Indian context and if so what should be the main objective behind its introduction, if CPP should be introduced for fixed to mobile calls by regulatory intervention or left to market forces and if its introduction would result in an accelerated growth of mobile subscribers including prepaid customers as in Latin America.

In his introductory remarks, Mr. Verma referred to the order and regulation to implement CPP by the erstwhile TRAI whose authority had been challenged before the Delhi High Court and said this was a closed chapter and the whole issue was being reviewed de novo to decide what would be in the best interest of the growth of telecommunication in the country in the present context.

He said he was amused to receive some letters from some organisations stating that the TRAI should withdraw its consultation paper as if it was a decision or declaration paper.

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