ASSOCHAM urges Govt to reject TRAI's proposal to permit internet players to operate without license fee

 TRAI’s recommendation to permit sale of internet services without a licence and license fee and other statutory levies is highly disruptive in nature and would wreck a huge investment made in the telecom sector, the ASSOCHAM has said, impressing upon the government to reject the ill-advised move of the regulator.

In a letter to the Telecom Secretary Ms Aruna Sundararajan, ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D S Rawat said that the TRAI recommendation that the Internet Services should be sold under a registration, instead of a licence via Public Wi-Fi networks, would mean there would be no liability on the service provider to pay statutory charge, license fee and compliance with any security conditions.

“We believe that this recommendation is completely unjustifiable and unwarranted as this would lead to a serious non-level playing field between licensed and unlicensed stakeholders. Doing so will disrupt the entire licensing framework and affect the huge amount of investment already made in the telecom infrastructure. This will widely impact the telecom sector and may also pose a threat to the national security by way of putting individual data at risk of easy access,” the chamber said.

“We sincerely hope that the DoT will consider (our) points favorably and will reject the TRAI’s recommendations on PDOAs. If at all, PDOAs need to be introduced then it should be done under a licensing framework only”, it stressed.