National long-distance (NLD) and international long-distance (ILD) telephony have been opened for competition. And a number of players like the Bharati’s India ONE are entering the fray. These companies negotiate interconnection agreements with the basic telephone companies—BSNL, MTNL and the P-telcos—so that their customers can reach the long-distance/Internet gateways. They pay charges to the carrier companies for hauling the call from the customer premises to the gateways and vise-versa.

Now, customers already chose as to which telco, BSNL/MTNL or the private basic telephone companies or the cellular companies should give them the telephone service. Similarly, it is they who should have the benefit of choice as far as their long-distance/international carrier is concerned. The telephone companies must honor and implement the customer’s choice

whether it is on a call basis or for a period. If this involves any technical work at the exchange, the companies may levy a reasonable charge, but at all times they must allow the customer to choose as to with which long-distance/international company their calls should to be placed. DoT, the licenser, and TRAI must make this very clear. The choice should be for the customer and not for the telco that gives him the telephone.

Dr Th Chowdary The communi-cations ministry must overcome its obsession to protect the revenue interests of state-held companies, and promote the fair and legitimate interests of all the companies

The NLD and ILD companies must also be free to carry customers’ national/international calls from their premises to the gateway. For these calls, the customers are those who make calls, not the access providing telcos. The NLD/ILD operators should be free to deploy point-to-multipoint radio in whichever city they have sizable long-distance traffic. This will avoid their paying to the local telephone companies. The savings could be passed on to customers. Nine cities in the country produce about 50 percent of the NLD traffic and about 80 percent of the international traffic. Here, the NLD/ILD companies can use this method of direct pick-up from PABXs and LANs to their gateways.

In the US, AT&T was broken up in 1984 and made only an interstate and international carrier. Then the regional bell operating companies (RBOCs) collected access fees for haulage of the long-distance calls from their customers to the gateway of the long-distance carriers like AT&T, MCI and Sprint. As the RBOCs were charging too much, AT&T soon looked for alternatives. A new class of companies called competitive access providers (CAPs) emerged. They connected large traffic-generating companies directly to the gateway of the long-distance telephone companies. Also, AT&T acquired cable TV companies so that customers’ homes could be connected over the cable TV facilities to its gateways. It also deployed wireless to pick up customer directly to the long-distance companies. It is this type of customer-oriented competition and regulation that is continuously bringing down telephone charges. This is what we should demand from DoT and TRAI.

Anything that the incumbents—largely BSNL and MTNL—do to restrict or delay customer welfare and emergence of full competition that can drive prices toward costs, must be discouraged and put down.

In telecommunications, there can be no multiplicity of suppliers ie competition unless the networks are interconnected. The former monopolists in India—BSNL and MTNL—like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, always resist interconnection; not by direct simple denial but in many subtle ways like "not here, not now, not in this quantity, not at this cost or not with your type of equipment." This is just like nations obstructing free trade by imposing quantitative and qualitative restrictions. When France wanted to discourage and price out Japanese imports of consumer electronics, it did not ban them but said that all of them had to be subjected to customs inspection in a place somewhere in the Alps, far from all airports as well as seaports. The state-owned incumbents, in relation to the emerging NLD and international long distance competitors, are exhibiting just that. This can only be explained as a hangover of the arrogant state-ownership.

TRAI and TDSAT, which were specifically brought into being to facilitate fair and fast competition, need to be proactive, and be more helpful to the challenger than to the incumbent. More importantly, the ministry of communications must give up its magnificent obsession to protect the revenue interests of the state-held companies. The minister should not be the CEO of those companies but the protector and promoter of all fair and legitimate interests of every company, private or public, for the overall welfare of the country's consumers. n

Dr Th Chowdary