Telcos have opposed any move by the government or sector regulator Trai to regulate or frame guidelines for the value-added services (VAS). Telcos want light touch regulation, where they only have to inform the department of telecom (DoT) before launching a service. VAS accounts for about 10% of the service providers’ revenues. Trai will soon take a call on whether VAS should be regulated in India.

“We believe that the current licensing obligations for provisioning of VAS are appropriate and adequate. So, there is no need for imposing any further obligation on the telecom operators,” the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the body representing GSM players, said in its communication to Trai. Ditto to the CDMA industry body—Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI)—which said: “Once DoT has been intimated about a VAS by a service provider and service provider also informs about the availability of Logical Information Machine (LIM) with a self certification regarding compliance to licensing terms and conditions, service provider should be allowed to offer service without awaiting any additional or formal clearance.”

At the same time, the COAI has pointed out that delay for obtaining a security clearance, which at times stretched for years was acting as a major bottleneck and hindrance for the growth of VAS. “So as to give a further impetus to VAS and to preserve the innovativeness of this segment, it is desirable and in fact even necessary that the security clearances be granted and service approved in a time-bound manner, the GSM body added.

VAS operators, however, do not share the telcos’ viewpoint and have demanded that the regulator impose guidelines for the sector. For instance, Times Internet, one of the leading VAS providers, has said that the regulator must ‘push for transparency on Management Information System (MIS) by mandating mobile operators to share data about downloads, usage etc on VAS services’. Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the representative body of content providers, also backed the move to impose additional obligations on telcos. The association recommended regulations for telecom operators regarding availability of short codes, access and interconnect norms as well as payment structure.

Net Core, in its response to Trai, suggested that voice minutes and SMS capacity should be sold in wholesale to the VASPs in order to provide level-playing field.

Source:economictimes