Bad practices have ready acceptability

LONG AGO the DoT introduced the OYT scheme (application deposit five times more than that for the general category) for telephones and when the OYT applicants also had to wait for long, it introduced the Tatkal (immediate) scheme, wherein applicants have to deposit ten times the general category application money for getting a telephone within 7 to 30 days. This example of periodically raising barriers against demand has been followed by those who give domestic gas supplies and now by the passport authorities and temples like the one in Tirupati.

Now it is the turn of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) to follow the DoT in yet another people- unfriendly and consumer-uncaring policy. The DoT mis-implemented the National Telecom Policy-94 (NTP'94) which among others had the laudable objective of giving affordable service to the public by awarding licences not to those who would give service at lowest prices but to those who pay the highest licence fee, thus making them very costly and in the event, unimplementable. To correct that we have been going through painful processes culminating in yet another NTP of 1999.

Though the evil of the highest licence fee as the prime criterion has destroyed the telecom liberalisation, the I&B Ministry is adopting the same principle to award five and more low power FM Radio Channels to private companies in all the important towns and cities. In all these one thing is very clear. The policies of the government to make Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) serve the public for their communications, information, education, commerce and trade needs are laudable. The blunder the government is committing is to entrust the implementation of the policy to the incumbent monopolists who see the new entrants as their rivals, as thieves of their market and therefore they, as licensors, are imposing debilitating and infantile paralytic financial pains on the new companies.

It is tragic that the people who are very intelligent, people- caring and very clear-thinking while in the Opposition, become ``nationalised'' by the bureaucrats in the incumbent ministries once they become ministers and their chief executives ignoring the public interest. It is surprising that several Leftist outfits which petitioned the Supreme Court and the Delhi Court against the licensing of private telephone companies and for restraining the TRAI are keeping quiet about the listener- unfriendly maximum licence fee based permits to private enterprises, wishing to get the FM Broadcast Channels.

The secretary of the Department of Telecom Services (DTS) who also doubles as the Member of the Telecom Commission has publicly said that in about six months time, IP-based telephony would be trialled by the DTS to be offered later to the public. This very gentleman in the DoT and the Telecom Commission was, along with others, responsible for banning IP telephony on the Internet. Whether packetised telephony is given on the Internet or on a separate Internet-like backbone is the same. If the bandwidth available is adequate it hardly matters whether voice is delivered as packets on the Internet or on a similar but separate fabric.

By banning IP telephony it appears that the DoT was delaying the day of its reckoning. If the private ISPs and others had introduced IP telephony, the DoT, lagging behind in the use of the latest technologies because of its interminable trials, would stand to be hollowed out. It preferred the customers to be spending more than they need to by not permitting the P-Telcos and the PISPs to offer IP telephony at a fraction of the current tariffs for voice, until itself is able to. This is an abuse of the dual role of licensor and operator.

T. H. CHOWDARY

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