The telecom bill makes a bold attempt to revise regulation for the better

livemint.com:

Earlier this week, the government introduced the Telecommunications Bill, 2023, in Parliament. It is intended to replace a law that was enacted over 100 years ago to govern telegraph communications, but one that has since been applied in India to every evolution of communication technology to date. If enacted into law, this will reset the way telecom is regulated in India.

Last year, a draft of this law was released for public consultation. As glad as I was that the Telegraph Act was being replaced, my enthusiasm was tempered by our path dependence that was coming in the way of more meaningful reform. While it had put in place a new regulatory framework, the state was going to retain unto itself the exclusive privilege of providing telecom services in the country.

As a result, private sector participation in the sector was going to continue to be permitted under licences—granted at the discretion of the Executive. The 2023 bill does away with all references to exclusive privilege. While it has substituted licences with authorizations and allows the state to prosecute any provision of telecom services without authorization, the decision to refrain from regulating telecom from a place of exclusive privilege is a welcome signal of a new regulatory mindset.

Similarly, conspicuous by its absence is a reference to over-the-top (OTT) services. In my analysis of the 2022 draft, I had argued that the law ought not to regulate anything beyond the hard infrastructure that facilitates communications. In particular, I had said that it needed to stop short of extending to telecom-adjacent services delivered using software built atop the core infrastructure layer.