NEW DELHI: More time has beengiven by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India for stakeholders to respond to its consultation pper on the ease of doing broadcast business issued last month.

Stakeholders can send in their comments by 11 September and counter-comments by 18 September 2017 to the paper of 31 August based on views received by it on a pre-consultation paper issued on 19 April this year.

The paper was issued noting that a business-friendly environment is a pre-requisite for the growth of a nation and makes a country a favorite business destination particularly with the fast changing regulatory framework for the media and entertainment sector. Seventeen questions were raised by the Authority.

Noting that the M and E sector in India is one of the fastest growing sectors, TRAI noted that It not only leads to employment generation but also helps in the growth and development of an economy.

The economic liberalization measures initiated in the early 1990s had focused on reduction of regulatory burden on enterprises as an underlying objective of the reform process. The Government has launched an ambitious programme of regulatory reforms aimed at making it easier to do business in India. The programme aims to pinpoint the bottlenecks and ease them to create a more business-friendly environment. The efforts have yielded some results with India ranked at 130 according to the World Banks’ Doing Business report. But there is still huge scope for further improvements.

TRAI notes that the IMF has branded India as the brightest spot in the Global Economy. Several Global Institutions have projected India as the leading destination for FDI in the World and a number of recent global reports and assessments, show that India has considerably improved its policies, practices and economic profile. It is expected that enabling policies and determination to continue with economic reforms, various initiatives taken by the Government such as Make in India, Smart City Mission, Skill India Mission, Digital India, etc. would further spur the growth of the economy.

The pre-consultation paper on the ease of doing business in broadcasting which covered all media came just a few months after a similar paper on telecom. In the new era of convergence, the two sectors are expected to complement each other.

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 are related to processes and procedures for obtaining permission/license/registration for the following broadcasting services and subsequent compliances connected with these permissions.

The fields include:

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