The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended granting infrastructure status to ‘broadcast and cable sector and submarine cable laying and repair in Indian Territorial Water and Exclusive Economic Zones of India’, and that Cable Landing Stations in India be classified as ‘critical and essential services’.

These are part of recommendations made by telecom and broadcast regulator after it floated a suo motu consultation. It said a user-friendly, transparent and responsive digital single-window system-based portal should be established for end-to-end inter-departmental online processes.

“Each Ministry should establish a standing Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) Committee to regularly review, simplify and update the existing processes and ensure ease of doing business as an on-going activity. Information & Broadcasting Ministry, Department of Telecom, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and other agencies should specify stage-wise timelines for all the processes which should be mentioned in the respective policy and updated in the Citizen Charter.” it stated.

It also recommends Wireless and Planning Commission should charge the spectrum royalty fee for temporary uplinking of live events on pro-rata basis for actual number of days of the event.

For local cable operators, TRAI has recommended that I&B Ministry should develop a mobile app for registration “The RoW portal (GatiShakti Sanchar Portal ) should incorporate all the service providers including LCOs. DoT should enable RoW approvals for LCOs also in consultation with MIB,” it added.

For reducing the compliance burden on Internet Service Providers, the regulator has recommended revision in the periodicity for submission by the ISPs on information regrding details of ISPNodes or Points of Presence (PoP)with their locations and number of broadband/ leased/ dial up subscribers to once every year. “ The website blocking process should be incorporated on the single window portal,” it added.

It said permissions of laying and operations of submarine cables network should also be made online as a part of Saral Sanchar portal. “ A committee should review the international best practices and feasibility for identifying and declaring special corridor in Indian marine context,” it added.

“ To avoid duplicity in testing of telecommunications products DoT should constitute a standing committee comprising two senior level officers of joint secretary level each from------MeitY, DoT, WPC, TEC, BIS and two representatives from product manufacturers. The committee should clearly identify a single testing scheme under which the product needs to be tested,” it added.