NEW DELHI: With the fast-changing regulatory framework for the media and entertainment sector, which in India is one of the fastest growing sectors, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had last month embarked on a major exercise to find out easier ways of doing business and cause least harassment to entrepreneurs.
To give stakeholders more time to respond to its pre-consultation paper on the ease of doing business in broadcasting which was issued on 17 April, the last date for responses has now been extended from 8 May to 19 May.
The Authority has on its own decided to go for a pre-consultation with the stakeholders on ease of doing business in the broadcasting sector, taking a cue from PM Modi-led government’s efforts to ease doing businesses in India. It hopes to review various policy issues related to the broadcasting sector with a view to create a conducive and business friendly environment in the sector and identify procedural bottlenecks that affect ease of doing business in the broadcasting sector and recommend measures for simplifying the rules, regulations and bring more transparency and clarity in policies/ framework of the broadcasting sector.
The aim is also to remove entry barriers by laying down well defined and transparent procedures and processes thereby creating level playing field and competition in the sector and to facilitate innovation and technology adoption for providing better quality of services to the consumers to steer further growth of the sector by attracting investment through investor friendly policies
Subjects to be covered in the pre-consultation before a final consultation paper is issued are related to processes and procedures for obtaining permission/license/registration for the following broadcasting services and subsequent compliance connected with these permissions. The fields include:
(a) Uplinking of TV channels
(b) Downlinking of TV channels
(c) Teleport services
(d) Direct-to-home services
(e) Private FM services
(f) Headend-in-the sky services
(g) Local Cable Operators
(h) Multi System Operators
(i) Community Radio Stations
