Background-
Telecommunication services had traditionally been acting as a voice communication service which was either managed by the Central Government or the Public Sector Enterprises. With the rapidly growing economy and introduction of free and open markets, the entry of private service providers felt for an inevitable need of an independent regulation. Hence, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was established by an act of the Parliament called as Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1977 with effect from 20th February,1977 in order to regulate telecom services, including fixing/revising the tariff rates for these telecom services which were earlier vested in the Central Government.
The TRAI Act was amended by an ordinance effective from 24th January, 2000 in order to establish Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal in order to regulate the telecommunication services, disposal of appeals, adjudication of disputes and protect the interest of the service providers and consumers of the telecom sector and to promote and ensure proper and orderly growth of the this sector. The Act extends to whole of India.
Ram Sevak Sharma is the current Chairman of TRAI.
What are the different types of telecommunication services?
Telecommunication services are those services which are provided by a communications company to a wide range of people. The most common form of telecommunications service is phone service which can either be wired or wireless standard. Apart from these, other services include internet, television and networking for business and homes. The pricing points may vary for different services and might be different for business and homes.
Functions of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India-
Section 11 of the TRAI Act, 1977 lists various functions of telecom and regulatory authority as follows:
1) The recommendations mentioned in TRAI are not binding on the Government. It can make recommendations on request from a licensor on the matters such as:
i) Terms and conditions of license to a service provider.
ii) Revocation of license in case of non- compliance of terms and conditions of license.
iii) Need and timing for introduction of a new service provider.
iv) Effectively managing of the available spectrum.
v) Look after the technological improvements in the services provided by the service providers.
vi) To promote efficiency and facilitate competition in the telecommunication services in order to have a proper and tremendous growth in that sector.
vii) Type of equipment to be used by the service providers after inspection of equipment used in the network.
viii) Encouraging new measures to be brought in for the improvement of the telecommunication sector and other matters connected therewith.
2) To discharge the functions namely:
i) To ensure compliance of the terms and conditions of the license.
ii) To ensure that there is sufficient compatibility and inter-connection between two different service providers.
iii) Laying down of quality service to the service providers, conducting a survey from time to time, ensure the time period for providing local and long-distance circuits of telecommunication between different service providers.
iv) Maintain a register of the service providers and ensure effective compliance of the sector.
3) Levy fees and charges at such rates as may be determined.
4) Perform such other functions including administrative and financial functions as may be prescribed by the Central Government or as required by the provisions of this act.
Case law:
Name of the judgement- Muthukumar v. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and Ors.
Date of the judgement- 24th April, 2019.
Citation- WP(MD)No.7855 of 2019.
Bench- Kirubakaran J.
Summary-
A writ petition was filed before the Madras High Court in public interest by Petitioner S. MuthuKumar, a public interest lawyer to ban the use and download of the app Tik Tok mobile application which allegedly contained explicit and disturbing content that degraded culture, encouraged pornography, made teenagers vulnerable to paedophiles, and triggered adverse health issues in adolescents who became addicted to the application. A writ mandamus was sought against the telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, District Collector, Madurai and the Commissionerate of Police, Karnataka, directing them to impose ban on the use of Tik Tok. While this writ petition was filed only these against 6 respondents, the High Court Suo-motu (on its own accord) arrayed 3 other respondents, namely, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and M/s. Byte dance (India) Technology Pvt. Ltd.
As an interim measure, High Court passed an order to impose ban on the downloading of the Tik Tok application and also prohibiting the media sites to display their videos. This order was challenged before the Supreme Court of India by M/s. Byte Dance (India) Technology Pvt. Ltd. (“Byte Dance”), the parent company of Tik Tok. Supreme Court directed the High Court to decide on the matter, failing which, the Interim Order of the High Court would automatically be suspended. In compliance with the direction of the Supreme Court, the High Court finally heard the matter and set-aside the Interim Order as per order dated April 24, 2019.
The plaintiffs argued that the content on the app was not appropriate and blasphemous and obscene with pornographic undertones. Tik Tok’s customer base included a large number of children and teenagers who were susceptible to cyber abuse and the adverse health issues arising out of exposure to such explicit and disturbing content.
Tik Tok and Byte Dance (“Respondents”) submitted that the app had a robust mechanism in place to deal with grievance raised in respect of inappropriate content. They also stated that this interim order was a violation of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India.
The Respondent company had Machine Moderation and Manual Moderation techniques in place to filter inappropriate or obscene content posted on its platform. The Court was also mindful of the elaborate safety features deployed by the Respondent, including: (a) existence of a user accepted community guidelines, (b) report content feature of the app, (c) presence of a private, dedicated channel for local government inquiries, (d) trained content moderation team with proficiency in 16 Indian languages, (e) safety centre guide for users, (f) terms of use and privacy policy to be followed by users, and such other necessary measures to protect users from misuse. The Court noted that after issuance of the Interim Order, Tik Tok had removed about six million videos which had doubtful content.
The Court stated that Tik Tok has to take all the appropriate measures to protect the cyber safety and exposure to children, and if not, it will be held for contempt of court.
Conclusion:
India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority has seen a commendable progress in the field of telecommunications.
i) India is currently the world’s second largest telecommunications market with a subscriber base of 1.20 billion and has registered a strong growth from the past year and a half.
ii) It is also one of the largest data consumers globally. It has the highest data usage per smartphone at an average of 9.8GB per month. It is expected to double to 18GB by 2024.
iii) Gross revenue of the telecom sector stood at Rs 121,527 crore (US$ 17.39 billion) in the financial year 2020 (till September 2019).
iv) The Government of India through it’s National Digital Communications Policy foresees an investment worth US$ 100 billion in the telecommunications sector by 2022.
Overall, the telecom regulatory authority of India is one of the most important authorities in India for ensuring compliance of the telecommunications sector, to nurture and promote growth of the sector, to deal with the issues coming before it, to address people’s complaints and to evolve the Indian market globally in the field of telecommunication in this rapidly growing and competitive market.
References:
1. https://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/reco10aug04.pdf
2. https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/what-is-trai-and-how-it-works-1496730772-1
3. http://ijlt.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/TRAI-Act-1997.pdf
5. https://ericryan.com/types-telecommunications-services/
7. https://www.ibef.org/industry/telecommunications.aspx
– Shivani Patki
