Telecom regulator RS Sharma rejected criticism of the authority’s order on predatory pricing , saying India's older operators are free to go to court against it. He pointed out that the telecom companies had done so previously and lost.Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman Sharma also countered Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao’s criticism of the country’s regulatory regime, saying it was doing everything it can toward ease of doing business and had adopted a light-touch approach. Earlier, the SMP parameters included volume of traffic, including data, and switching capacity, which have been dropped in the amended regulation.Analysts say the new SMP parameters mean Jio won’t fall within the ambit of predatory pricing for several quarters since its market share is 13-14% — despite dominating data traffic volumes — while rivals Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea will be constrained as their revenue share is already over 30%.Sharma rejected Colao’s comments that India is still very complicated from the regulatory point of view. “We believe in lighttouch regulation and are not a heavy-handed regulator, and wouldn’t want that to happen,” the Trai boss said.He said the regulator expected to send recommendations on spectrum pricing, including those of 5G airwaves, in the next one-to-two months to the telecom department.It had already issued recommendations to the government on machine-to-machine communications, internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing, which are the “basic pieces of 5G infrastructure, be it in the front-end or backend”. (The reporter is in Barcelona to cover the Mobile World Congress at the invitation of Huawei.)

Source: Economic Times February 28, 2018 01:18 UTC