We started this process in the weeks before the 2008 SAARC Summit. When the issue was mentioned in the SAARC Chair’s speech and included in the Declaration, we were, naturally, pleased. I recall telling a journalist that at most it would take a few months to get this implemented.

We raised the issue with the then Chair of the South Asian Telecom Regulator’s Council, Mr Nripendra Misra of India. I went to Delhi to brief him and hand over the relevant benchmark data. That was last October. More than a few months since the SAARC Summit.

The only progress we have seen has come from the private operators. Both Lanka Bell and Dialog have lowered prices to call India; no longer can we say that it costs less to call non-SAARC countries than SAARC, at least with respect to Sri Lanka.

This is one area where concerted action is necessary by all the SAARC members. Lower the termination rates to an agreed level, if necessary with an annual step down. Then no one can say that one country’s operators are benefiting vis-à-vis another’s.

A regional Regulators’ Conference scheduled to be held in Colombo next week is expected to seek consensus from all members on a single International Direct Dialing (IDD) rate for the region. Sri Lankan Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRC) Director General Priyantha Kariyapperuma told the Sunday Times FT that this will be discussed at the annual 11th South Asian Telecommunications Regulators Council (SATRC – 11) on November 24-26 in Colombo .

“The SATRC-11 will address the key policy and regulatory issues in the SAARC countries. Once you have regional collaboration you have trans-border communication facilities without any restrictions,” he noted.

Full report.

August has been a busy month for the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and its chairman, the redoubtable Nripendra Misra, a dyed-in-wool bureaucrat who has in his regulatory avatar done arguably more than any of his predecessors on the job. He has plenty of support and equally bitter critics who wish he would give up on forbearance, cut rentals, mandate cheaper roaming and ensure per second billing instead of per minute.

On August 20, the authority allowed India’s estimated 295 million telecom subscribers the freedom to use different long distance service providers without changing their service provider. Two days earlier, it had unshackled internet telephony (voice transmitted over internet protocol networks). Two weeks before that, it had opened the doors for virtual mobile networks, virgin territory in India till then.

Read the full article in Business Standard here.

Pakistan Bests India in Telecoms Regulation by M. Rajendran, Hindustan Times, Dec 20, 2006.

[..]A survey by research agency LIRNEAsia says Pakistan overtook both India and Sri Lanka in basic telecom measures in fixed and mobile services, such as transparency of licensing; information provided to applicants about the terms, conditions, criteria and length of time needed to reach a decision on their applications; licence conditions; mergers and acquisitions; and niche licences.

The ‘Telecom Regulatory Environment, 2006′ survey conducted by Indonesia-based LIRNEAsia suggests that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) needs to improve its regulation in interconnection and anti-competitive practices[..]

TRAI chairman Nripendra Misra told Hindustan Times that he had no comment to offer as he had not seen the study.

Commenting on the findings, Mahesh Uppal, a telecom analyst said, “We still have to go some way on our regulatory parameters. Our greatest advantage is that we have much higher levels of raw competition on most of our markets, compared to our neighbour.”[..]