(18 March 2009 10:05 pm)

MUMBAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has allowed service providers to file their interconnect agreements with broadcasters on an annual basis, simplifying the earlier process that required a quarterly filing.

The Register of Interconnect Agreement (Broadcasting and Cable Services) (Fourth Amendment) Regulation, 2009, has made provisions for annual filing by service providers by 31 July every year, the sector regulator said in a statement.

For better monitoring, newly emerging service providers such as HITS operators and IPTV service providers are also required to file interconnect agreements with the broadcasters annually with the Authority.

Interconnect agreements are contractual agreements between service providers and broadcasters, involving payment schemes and schedules, coordinating routing policies, acceptable use policies, coordinating network operations and dispute resolution.

Since it is an industry practice to sign interconnection agreements on an annual basis, mainly for a calendar year or for the financial year, Trai has sought to harmonise regulation with the industry practice.

The Authority has also decided that all the interconnection agreements should be in written form by the broadcasters. It is the responsibility of the broadcasters and MSOs to hand over such written agreements after execution to the distributor of TV channels. A provision for submitting a certificate in this regard has also been incorporated in the present regulation.

Based on the inputs during consultation process and considering large volume of data being filed by various service providers, the Authority has decided that the interconnection filings may be kept for a period of three years from the date of their filing or till the expiry of the validity period of the agreement, whichever is later and accordingly the regulations have been suitably amended for this purpose.

Earlier, Trai had issued regulations on 31 December 2004 for filing and registration of interconnect agreements entered into by broadcasters with service providers of different platforms.