MUMBAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had issued a paper on "Ease of doing Telecom Business in India" on 14 March 2017 and sought comments of stakeholders. The last date for receiving written comments from the stakeholders was fixed as 11 April 2017.

Promoting “ease of doing business” is amongst the priority work items for unhindered growth of thetelecom sector. A number of steps have already been taken for ease of doing business. Steps like adoption of market based spectrum management such as assignment of spectrum through auction, permitting spectrum trading, spectrum sharing and liberalisation of administratively assigned spectrum, Unified Licensing regime, Merger and Acquisition guidelines, Virtual Network Operation etc. have been guided by the principles of “ease of doing business”.

Some stakeholders requested that, since the paper deals with various issues, the time line for submission of comments may be extended. Considering the requests, it has been decided to extend the last date for submission of written comments up to 25 April 2017.

The comments may be sent preferably in electronic form at advmn@trai.gov.in. TRAI may be contacted at Telephone Number +91-11-23210481.

Further, the Authority is of the opinion that various processes that a telecom licensee is required to go through, should be simplified and combined to the extent possible to economise on efforts on part of the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) as well as the Government. Therefore, it is important to identify the bottlenecks, obstacles or hindrances that are making it difficult to do telecom business in India and thus, require regulatory intervention.