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TRAI Recommends Application Services Licensing, Common Short Codes; Issues

Bureaucracy may just get a hold of VAS if this goes through: After an extensive consultation process, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has finalized two key recommendations on Value Added Services, now called Application Services, since the authority has recognized that these can be run independently of telecom operators: Firstly, bringing application service providers under a licensing regime, and secondly, the setting up a Short Code Council (SCC) for allocation of short codes independent of Telecom operators. Readers should bear in mind that these are recommendations and not the applicable policy yet. Download the recommendations here. On the whole, as much as the move to set up a Short Code Council is a positive move, there is "Bureaucracy" written all over these recommendations, and it appears to be a move to control a struggling VAS ecosystem, and will inhibit the growth of an independent content and services ecosystem, because approvals will mean that the SCC could be used to control content; this should be seen in the context of the TRAI's  SMS Spam regulations which initially inhibited SMS based social networking and publishing. However, these recommendations will have to be approved by the Department of Telecom, these which could take from a month to infinity, given the history of TRAI recommendations: Application Service License - Definition of Application Services: "Application services are enhanced services, in the nature of non-core services, which either add value to the basic tele services or can be provided as standalone application services through telecommunication…

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Written By

Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS

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