TRAI's 'ease of doing business' recommendations to aid rapid growth of digital economy: BIF

Regulator TRAI's recent recommendations on 'Ease of Doing Business' in the telecom and broadcasting sectors are extremely comprehensive, greatly facilitating, and will aid in rapid growth of the digital economy, according to industry body Broadband India Forum (BIF).

The suggestions made by the regulator for ease of doing business in the telecom sector, including reducing the heavy compliance burden on the operators, simplifying the verification process for license fees and spectrum usage charge, granting critical and essential service status to submarine cable laying and repair, and a single window portal for inter-departmental clearances, are all "extremely progressive steps".

"The recently announced TRAI recommendations on 'Ease of Doing Business' in the Telecom and Broadcasting sectors are extremely comprehensive and greatly facilitating," BIF said in a statement.

It will aid in healthy and rapid growth of the digital economy, BIF added.

Over the last three decades, the telecom sector has undergone rapid technological changes, with almost three generations of technology evolution having taken place, it said, observing that there has also been a remarkable transformation in the 'Space' sector during the same time.

This necessitated changes in the complex and time-consuming procedures and processes, many of which were associated with the past legacy and have become obsolete or irrelevant over the time and needed to be done away with, BIF observed.

Broadband India Forum President TV Ramachandran said coming on the footsteps of the recently announced Space Policy 2023, these proposed reforms in ease of doing business, along with the new Space Policy, "are likely to give a big boost to the entire satellite communications and broadcasting sector".

"The suggestions made by the regulator for ease of doing business (EoDB) in the telecom sector include reducing the heavy compliance burden on the operators, simplifying the verification process for license fees and spectrum usage charge, granting critical and essential service status to submarine cable laying and repair, and a single window portal for inter-departmental and/or inter-ministerial clearances-all of which are extremely progressive steps," according to BIF.

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