COAI statement on Recommendations made by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology

COAI statement on Recommendations by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology.

Lt. Gen. Dr. S.P. Kochhar, Director General, COAI

Lt. Gen. Dr. S.P. Kochhar, Director General, COAI, said “The recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and IT to merge the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under a single umbrella, is expected to improve coordination in handling issues related to technology convergence. In whatever format this is implemented, it will lead to a focused and composite handling of issues, thereby formulating policies which are equally applicable to all the concerned ministries, as cited above, and reduce multiple policy formulations on the same subject, thus improving transparency and compliances.

Taking the same logic into the operational domain covering spam/fraud messages and calls spanning over both telecom networks and OTT channels, it is necessary to apply one set of policies and regulations to both components, i.e., TSPs and OTTs.

While telcos are currently being governed by the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation (TCCPR) 2018 and noticeable results have been observed in the spam/unwanted forms of communication via the TSPs, the App based communications currently not under the same regulation, remain unchecked and are becoming a growing concern for the consumers and the government.

While it is encouraging to note the recent announcement of DoT collaborating with one of the top OTT Communication Players in the country to prevent the spam and scam communications in India through a safety and educational campaign; we believe that it would be proper for regulatory and security measures to be put in place for all players, including OTTs and TSPs, to be governed by the same regulatory framework.

Therefore, we are hopeful that this step will help in uniformly addressing the issue of spam, telemarketing, etc. to a very large extent across all communication channels and help remove/restrict the scourge of unwanted/fraud communications, thus providing much needed relief to the consumers.”