TRAI seeks to streamline reporting system of interconnect agreements

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has sought stakeholders’ comments on the consultation paper on the Register of Interconnection Agreements (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Regulations, 2016. The comments can be posted by April 25, 2016, while counter-comments can be submitted by May 5, 2016.

The primary objective of Register of Interconnection Regulations is to prescribe the contours of a reporting system to service providers to report interconnection agreement details to TRAI so as to enable the Authority to maintain register of interconnect agreements as per the provisions of TRAI Act. It is also useful for monitoring and analysing market practices prevailing for interconnection agreements. Presently, the regulations mandate service providers to report the prescribed information, annually.

Broadcasting and Cable Services were brought within the ambit of telecommunication services in terms of section 2(k) of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act 1997 in the year 2004.

Accordingly, the Authority had put in place regulatory framework for Interconnection through the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnection Regulations, 2004 dated December 10, 2004 and the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnection (Digital Addressable Cable TV Systems) Regulations, 2012 dated April 30, 2012 for regulating interconnect arrangements for broadcasting and cable services. These regulations mandate service providers to have written interconnection agreements for provisioning of signals of pay channels (as declared by respective broadcaster under the relevant tariff order).

Current regulatory framework for interconnection mandates written interconnection agreements between:

• A broadcaster of pay TV channels and distributors of such TV channels
• A Multi System Operator (MSO) and local cable operator (LCO)
• Headend In The Sky (HITS) operator and LCO

Need for reviewing the present regulations

On examination of the interconnection filing details submitted by the service providers at present, the Authority has inter-alia observed the following:

• The filings received from various service providers are not uniform which make the compilation and analysis very difficult;
• The requirement in the regulations regarding filing of standard affiliation agreement which is interpreted by many service providers as filing of Reference Interconnect Offers again, leading to duplicity of reporting;
• The Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable services) Interconnection (Digital Addressable Systems) Regulations, 2012 requires that every broadcaster shall furnish the details of carriage fee paid by it to the Multi System Operator to the Authority along with the information furnished under the Register of interconnect agreements (Broadcasting and Cable services) Regulation, 2004. A lack of uniformity has been observed in this regard among the broadcasters in furnishing this information.

Further, the register of interconnection regulations needs to be updated to account various changes subsequently done in regulatory framework.

At present, the periodicity of the reporting is once in a year. Since, validity of most of the interconnection agreements signed is also one year. By the time these are reported as per the requirement specified under the regulations, their validity is already over. Therefore, in such cases, it is not possible to take any corrective action even if some changes are felt necessary and such agreements become fait accompli.

The sunset date notified by the Central Government for analog signals and to implement Phase-III implementation of digital addressable cable system (DAS) was 31st December 2015. This has resulted in significant penetration of digital signals in urban and semi urban areas. The digitization of cable services in the rest of the country would be completed by 31st December 2016. This has paved way to large number of MSO registrations with the Government.

As per the latest data available, 757 Multi system operators are registered with Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (as on 26.02.2016, 522 MSOs have been granted provisional registration and 235 MSOs have been granted permanent registration). At present, around 51 Broadcasters have declared either few or all of their channels as pay channels (total 252 TV channels) to the Authority. Therefore, the volume of interconnection agreements is large.

The information reporting system relating to these interconnection agreements should be simple and easy to update. With the pervasiveness of Information and communication technologies (ICTs), the required information is maintained by most of the service providers in the electronic format. Therefore, it may be easy for them to communicate the required information in the electronic format itself. Taking into account the voluminous nature of the information, its validation and the need to maintain register for easy analysis/ information retrieval; it is felt that the reporting system may be changed to electronic format.

Reporting of information

Presently, the interconnection details, that are valid during reported year and amendments there on, are being reported to TRAI on annual basis. Such filing on annual basis results in compilation of huge data by the service providers. Further, the submitted information is repetitive for some agreements whose term of validity is longer than one year or whose term is spilling over next reporting period.

There is a need to simplify this mechanism by changing the mode and periodicity of filing. One way of achieving the same is to provide flexibility in reporting the interconnection details throughout the year within certain days of signing of interconnection agreement (say one month). This can be done by electronically accepting the reports on monthly basis. Other way could be submit the information on real time basis, so that whenever the agreement is signed, one copy of the same is forwarded along with the required information to TRAI.

On several occasions it has been noticed by the Authority that the information so reported by the service providers is found to be either incomplete or inaccurate, therefore signing by authorized officer will ensure the responsibility in cases of filing of misleading, inaccurate, incomplete information. Since the information/details to be submitted to the Authority needs to be properly authenticated and the reporting company should be made accountable for deviations in the information so reported, therefore it may be signed by the authorized officer of the company such as company secretary or general counsel in cases where the service provider is not registered as a company.

Format of reports

The details of interconnection agreements being reported under the present regulations have become too voluminous with the growing number of broadcasters and the distributor of TV channels. The stakeholders have also requested in several forums to review and simplify the same.

The draft regulations contain schedules in which formats have been proposed for easy compilation and reporting. In order to avoid duplicity of information, these formats are designed keeping in view the principle that the provider of TV channel signals are access to the distribution network would report the interconnect details to the Authority. Thus, the details of interconnect agreements between broadcaster of pay channel and distributor of TV channels shall be reported by the broadcaster of pay channel.

Similarly, the interconnect details of MSO/HITS and LCO shall be reported by the MSO/ HITS. Further, the carriage details wherever applicable shall be reported by MSOs/HITS/DTH operators. Accordingly, the formats are given in the schedules which are designed keeping in view the electronic filing. For this purpose, suitable online systems need to be developed. However, for the interim, acceptance of reports through Excel and PDF formats with suitable digital signatures can be considered. The purpose of this exercise is to simplify the reporting procedure and work towards ease of doing business.