[cr-india] TRAI Open House in Mumbai

[Vickram Crishna]

Sorry it has taken me a while to get back to my computer after Saturday.

I was very favorably impressed by the way the Open House was handled. 
Unfortunately, the public response left a lot to be desired.

Firstly, to avoid wasting public time, TRAI organised separate 
sessions for CAS and radio. The CAS session took place in the 
morning, and closed well in time to enable the radio session to 
proceed uninterrupted.

Of the active FM stakeholders, only Times FM (4 people), City (1 
person) Comet (1 person) and myself attended, plus the media, who 
obviously thought things would happen, since there were 4 or 5 people 
there from different media. I only met Deccan Herald and 
indiantelevsion, though.

TRAI had made slides covering the main points culled from its 
position paper, and invited comments on these one by one. They began 
by assuring the public that a separate session would definitely be 
held on CR, and to please reserve all CR questions for that meeting. 
This session would only be on matters relating to commercial FM.

I must say that only Times and I participated verbally, with Comet, 
who came in a little late, staying quiet once it was established that 
TRAI would not discuss any interventions outside of commercial FM.

I made the point that low power FM has its own dynamics and that 
these relate to commercial as well as other forms of public service 
radio. I asked TRAI to consider that discussion in watertight 
compartments would not serve the purpose adequately, as the arbitrary 
division of FM into government, private and community is inadequate 
to encompass the potential of this technology.

I made this point in each of the four principal areas of discussion, 
licensing (including tendering), service area, technology/technicals 
and content.

Both Mr Baijal and Mr Kacker agreed that we cannot discuss the Indian 
situation wholly within the context of the other countries' 
experience, as the spectrum is almost totally empty here. This was 
particularly in response to the suggestion made by Times FM that 
cross channel interference would be an issue going forward. Mr Kacker 
referred to the intervention made by Dr Mehta in Delhi, regarding 
research already established in this area (the Prometheus Project). I 
detailed my suggestion for purposing bands within the allocated 
spectrum to the different license types, while Times mentioned that 
this would further limit available space. I did not get the 
impression that TRAI was inclined to buy their reasoning.

I also made the point that the historically, framing of radio policy 
has eroded the ability of the Indian electronic manufacturing sector 
to play a role in technology research, development and original 
engineering for use in India. Times FM had pointed out they were 
limited to buying imported equipment as there was no equipment made 
here.

There was a general chorus that the license approval procedure was 
time consuming , non-transparent and cumbersome. I suggested a 
mapping of the usable physical space, but Mr Kacker was of the 
opinion that this would take too long. I responded that a start had 
to be made, as clearly leaving this procedure in the hands of SACFA 
and WPC was not conducive to rapid spread of FM reach to the people 
of India. While there was no response from the TRAI officials to this 
point, I got a feeling of discomfort that there are issues of 
command-control and turf here. Sajan may be better informed on this 
point.

All in all, I found the TRAI attitude very positive and encouraging, 
and hope that the interventions we make (Mr Kacker also requested the 
Mumbai audience to soon mail him suggestions for a position paper on 
CR, as Sajan has informed us earlier) will find root in actions taken 
going forward.

-- 
Vickram