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fulfilling these consumer requirements, service
providers are exploring new avenues for providing
value added services and look for innovations
in telecom technologies. The development of
converged platform commonly known as Next
Generation Networks (NGN) has made it possible
to provide various services on IP backbone.
NGN is essentially a managed IP-based (i.e.,
packet-switched) network that supports variety
of high speed data intensive services including,
IPTV, HDTV, videoconferencing, VoIP, Instant
Messaging, e-mail, and other packet-switched
communication services. The increasing acceptability
of common IP back bone, reducing ARPU, intense
competition and need to provide new value
added services and applications encouraging
migration to NGN platforms world-over.
Such
migration may be restricted due to existing
regulatory frameworks. Different options
available to regulators are to support investment,
encourage & support migration, encourage
migration, or wait & watch. In all the
above strategies, the higher rewards are
associated with high risk. TRAI believes
that being a technological advancement,
the regulators’ role is to analyse
the various impediments and initiate appropriate
action to redress these impediments in a
time bound manner so that service providers
interested to migrate to NGN can do so without
any regulatory hurdle.
Stakeholders
have been asked to comment on whether they
feel there is need for a change in the present
licensing and regulatory framework In view
of emergence of NGN and technological innovation.
They
have also been asked if there is need to
identify the control points and monitor
the
market
development to ensure smooth migration to
NGN and their opinion has been sought on
what the regulator’s role should be.
In
an NGN environment where the content provider
and the carrier (Telecom Service provider)
are the same (On deck) or different entities
(Off deck), TRAI wants to know who should
be responsible for ensuring content regulations
and whether the content provider (In off
deck scenario) be made fully responsible
for infringement of
intellectual
property right violation of advertisement
code, programme code or any other provisions
in respect to content. In the case of off
deck content provision, TRAI wants to know
if the responsibility of telecom service
provider should be limited to preventing
the flow of content notified as violation
of various provision of IPR, programme code,
advertisement code etc to encourage flow
of more content on the network.
The
Regulator also wants to know the stakeholders’
view on whether interconnection of all service
providers/entities through Interconnect
exchange will be desirable to facilitate
peering of IP traffic in NGN environment
and should all service providers be mandated
to get connected (at least with least defined
capacity) to Interconnect exchange.
Noting
that the present licensing conditions require
installation of all switches within the
licensing area, TRAI wants to know if the
stakeholders feel such restrictions may
obstruct best economical network model and
may impact migration to NGN.
Some
of the other issues discussed in the consultation
paper are: Competition Issues; Provision
of third party service and applications;
Service Level Agreements (SLA); Placement
of Active elements in the network; and Compatible
interface by NGN Networks for Interconnections
with TDM Networks.
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