The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has called the first meeting of Stakeholders Advisory Committee for telecom service providers (TSPs) on July 16. The committee comprises industry captains Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman, Bharti Airtel; Akash Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Jio (RJIL); N Chandrasekaran, Chairperson, Tata Group; Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group; and PK Purwar, CMD, BSNL.
Also, invitation has been sent to Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Airtel; Pankaj Pawar, MD, RJIL; and Akshaya Moondra, CEO, Vodafone Idea (VIL).
“This has reference to the formation of Stakeholder Advisory Committee for telecom service providers (TSPs)....the first meeting of the committee will be held on July 16 around afternoon,” a source told businessline.
The DoT letter addressed to above mentioned officials, dated last week, had also requested the industrialists/ stakeholders to share/ suggest agenda items for consideration by July 10, which can be discussed during the meeting next week.
The DoT had constituted six stakeholder advisory committees which will give inputs for fostering the growth of telecom sector and also for resolving key issues. The move was spearheaded by Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Communications, soon after taking the charge last month.
In order to bring reforms in the telecom sector, Scindia decided to constitute these committees original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), TSPs, the satellite communications ecosystem, Internet service providers (ISPs), electronics, and an Advisory Committee of Academicians and R&D in the telecommunications sector.
It was also decided that the committees will be represented by industry associations, private firms, Niti Aayog, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and officials from the DoT.
The members in the OEM Committee will be represented by telecom gear makers like Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco, HFCL, Sterlite, VVDN Technologies, and the government-owned Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT).
Similarly, the TSP Committee include the five operators and members from the Cellular Operators Association of India and Global System of Mobile Communications Association, among others.
Potential issues
In the academicians and telecommunications R&D Committee, the representation from IIT Madras and Hyderabad, Telecom Standards Development Society, C-DOT, International Telecommunications Union Innovation Office, industry associations like Ficci, Assocham and others will be included.
The committee on satellite ecosystem will have members from OneWeb, Nelco, Reliance Jio and BSNL, the sources said.
According to sources, the main discussions in the first meeting can revolve around the issues related to heavy tax regime in the telecom sector and abolishing of regulatory levies like the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) and annual gross revenue, considering the huge capital that TSPs have to invest in the current scenario, especially for the deployment of 5G.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) that represents the telecom operators had also recently urged the Finance Ministry to reduce the telecom license fee urgently from three per cent to one per cent, so that it just covers the administrative costs by the DoT/ government thereby relieving the TSPs from additional financial burden.