Convergence Bill: for a broader vision

The detailed rules and regulations that will govern the Convergence Bill are yet to be framed. If the experience with the Information Technology Act is any indication, such an exercise would take at least six months unless the new Communications Minister decides to speed things up, says Sandeep Dikshit.

The introduction of the Communications Bill in the Lok Sabha last week has conjured visions of India's middle class being serenaded by a large number of companies offering voice, information technology (IT) and broadcasting on a single cable in the near future.

No longer will the locality property dealer turned cable operator be able to charge according to his whims. Standing in a queue to seek audience with capricious officials of Government run phone companies will be a foggy memory. And, Internet will be on tap round-the-clock.

For the industry, doing the rounds of the musty and unresponsive corridors of Sanchar Bhavan and Mandi House will no longer be a weekly exercise to keep the babus in good humour. Issuance of composite licences will spell an end to the endless wars between cellular and basic phone companies. Success in business will be based on a solid corporate strategy which has been sensitively tuned to people's aspirations.

The heightened expectations are natural. The Bill has taken unusually long time to formulate. In June 2000, the Government had indicated that the draft of the Bill, which was at that time rather trendily named Information, Communications and Entertainment (ICE) Bill was all but ready. A similar ``hint'' was made in June this year. But it took considerable burning of the proverbial midnight oil and several backroom manoeuvres before the Government felt confident enough to introduce the Bill on the last day of year 2001's monsoon session.

First, the detailed rules and regulations that will govern the Bill are yet to be framed. If the experience with the Information Technology Act is any indication, such an exercise would take at least six months unless the new Communications Minister, Mr. Pramod Mahajan, decides to speed things up. The passage of the Bill is also expected to consume time.

Setting up convergent bodies

Then comes the vital question of setting up a superregulator and a dispute settlement body for all the three sectors. A search committee will be set up to scout for a suitable person to head the Communications Commission of India (CCI). It will also have to nominate ten members to the CCI (excluding the Chairperson and the Spectrum Manager) and at least six to the Appellate Tribunal.

Refreshingly, the Bill recognises the need to avoid taking on board only fossilised or recently superannuated bureaucrats. At least half the members of CCI will be people who have attained eminence in the fields of literature, performing arts, media, culture, education, films and from persons prominent in social and consumer activities. The other five members of CCI will be from the same background — telecom, broadcasting, finance, management or law — as those who are gracing or have served on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

There are two points of concern while selecting members for the highly coveted posts of CCI and the Appellate Tribunal. The loose selection criteria will give rise to the temptation of appointing those acolytes of the ruling party who were not obligated with positions financed by the Central Exchequer.

Nominating a light-weight film personality whose days on the silver screen were long over or selecting a loyal member of some Cabinet Minister's household on grounds that he\she also dubbed as a social worker may be politically expedient but it will cause damage to cultivating the perception of impartiality in the institution of CCI. The subdued manner in which the second edition of TRAI is working has certainly helped to sheath the knives but till today it has not inspired confidence in the minds of the corporate sector. Keeping past experiences in mind, the appointees must possess the moral fibre to turn down hints from the Government or other interested parties to fine-tune policies or judgments in their favour.

Second, CCI's field of operations is extensive. It will not just hand out licences and allocate spectrum, both of which are admittedly important and influential tasks, but also deal with several ethical questions such as whether companies' operators are equally indulgent to income-challenged consumers as well as top-of-the-line corporates.

Since the Communications Minister had introduced the Bill, it will be fair to assume that the rules and regulations will be framed under the supervision of new incumbent, Mr. Pramod Mahajan. Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Mahajan has been among those who have closely involved with fleshing the Convergence Bill. In fact, it was at his initiative that IT enabled services such as call centres and tele-banking were kept out of CCI's licensing regime. He also ensured that the moral police was not unduly encouraged to run riot in cyberspace by lobbying against the attempt to create a separate authority to scan content.

Once the Government has tackled these issues relating to creating a perception of credibility and fairness in CCI, it will have to turn its attention to the more contentious issue of issuing licences. Already, existing cellular operators are up in arms against the entry of new companies through the fourth round of tenders of cellular services. More confusion could follow unless the Government has a clear vision about the whole exercise.

The market is already heated with cable operators trying to become Internet service providers; broadcasting companies trying to by-pass cable operators through DTH; and, phone companies attempting to become providers of cable TV and Internet. Turf wars of every conceivable kind — from locality level to intra-corporate are beginning to break out.

The CCI also has other important tasks with regard to licensing. These include defining the eligibility conditions, restrictions on ownership and control of media and curbing monopolistic tendencies already pronounced in some corporate houses vying to enter the ICE (information, communication and entertainment) age in a big way.

The Bill has set out five broad categories of licences which will replace the current sector specific licences. It is expected that this flexible licensing regime will optimise the use of resources and encourage faster development of infrastructure. But everything will depend on how the Government will get around the problem of ensuring fair-play while framing the detailed rules governing the issuance of licences.

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Categories identified

THE LICENCE in the convergence era will be granted in the following broad categories:

Provision or owning of network infrastructure facilities. This includes earth stations, cables, towers and pits.

Provision of network services. Includes band-width services, fixed links and mobile links.

Provision of network application services such as switched telephony, cellular services, global satellite based phones, Internet based telephony, radio paging, trunking, date services and broadcasting.

Provide content application services. These include satellite broadcasting, subscription broadcasting, free to air TV and radio broadcasting.

Provide value added network application services such as Internet services and unified messaging services.

- SD

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