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By Channa Kasturisinghe

The Government is planning to introduce a new Act to facilitate the implementation of the proposed National Communications Policy in the near future.

The new Act which is being drafted would focus on curbing anti-competitive practices which are likely to develop in the country's communication sector as a result of increasing competition among many new operators to enter the market and solving issues pertaining to unlicensed broadcasting, the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) sources told the Daily News.

"With the end of the five-year exclusivity arrangement with Sri Lanka Telecom on August 5, 2002, the Government is planning to open the telecommunications market further and to see greater competition in this field.

Following the implementation of the National Communications Policy we expect that there would be fierce competition in the market that would result in some operators resorting to anti-competitive practices.

The new Act which would be possibly called Communication Convergence Act would ensure that that all `players' will have an equal opportunity to develop their Businesses while providing a better service to their customers," a senior TRC official said.

The Government has already announced a major area of reform by creating a licensing framework to be used in the future to regulate International Termination, International Wholesale Origination and International Retail Origination. An unlimited number of External Gateway Operators (EGO) licences are expected to be issued from February.

"The future reforms will benefit the domestic user with better and cheaper service, better quality telephone lines, greater choice of service providers, cheaper installation facilities," Secretary, Ministry of Mass Communication, Kumar Abeysinghe said.He said the reforms would most importantly rid corruption from the system.

"We expect the market to expand from one million to 19 million telecom companies in the near future. The quality of the service will improve because more companies will be competing for customers.

Today many of the services provided are of a low quality and they have largely been limited to those who can afford them particularly in the Western Province. In future these reforms will lead to greater access of telephone services particularly in the rural areas.

Telecommunications which provide the best services at affordable prices will benefit from the larger market. However, there is room for certain operators to resort to anti-competitive practices.

That is why the Government is planning to introduce new legislation," Abeysinghe said.

He said the new competitive environment created by the open licensing poicy and the interconnection framework will result in the channelling of entrepreneurial energy to the provision of efficient and innovative telecom services as opposed to the defence of indefensible monopolies, the exploitation of short term arbitrage opportunities associated with them and attendant practice of excessive litigation.

"The EGO licensing regime is the first implementation of the new policy of relying on discretionary licensing only where scarce resources are involved.

With licences being issued to all who fulfill the stated criteria, without numerical limit, there is no opportunity for the abuse of discretionary authority.

The new interconnection regime will establish a non-discriminatory interconnection regime that wil allow all operators to function on a level playing fied, without having to seek special favours from anyone," Abeysinghe said.

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