The government wants to allocate, not auction, spectrum–and that’s a good move
The new telecom bill is a big improvement over the law covering this vital part of national life that, at present, lies fragmented in terms of being contained in separate statutes and in terms of coherence. It is welcome for prioritising the efficiency needs of the sector over partisan political considerations. Allocation of satellite spectrum by administrative means rather than compulsorily via auctions is the sensible way to go about it, even if it cuts the ground from under the feet of the so-called Devas scam alleged against the UPA government.
The ground for alleging impropriety had been that the spectrum assigned to Devas for satellite broadband was given on an administrative basis, rather than via auctions. The bill suffers from two faults, nevertheless. One is its introduction as a money bill, dispensing with the need for approval by the Rajya Sabha.
This is eminently avoidable. The other is the absence of parliamentary oversight for extreme decisions, such as to take over networks, or decisions to breach fundamental rights, such as privacy. Ideally, such decisions should proceed with a judicial order and culminate with reporting on the action and its results to a committee of Parliament, instead of reducing accountability to the wisdom of a civil servant, which essentially means, discretion of the Executive.
It is welcome that the government has dropped a proposal to regulate over-the-top (OTT) apps on par with regulated telecom services. Messenger services and calling apps are software-enabled functionalities of basic internet connectivity. But then, so are video streaming services, increasingly the preferred way to access content, at the expense of broadcast TV.
Read more on livemint.com
