Boostrapping India : COMM.01 - RLPP/Jury in Telecom Regulators
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Proposed administrative procedure
COMM.01   -   RLPP/Jury   over   Telecom/cable   Regulators

Purpose
: To reduce nexusproness in regulation/supervision over telecommunication/cable companies

Pre-requiste readings :
  • RLPP.
  • Administrative issues in telecommunication.

      Contents
    1. The problem with Regulatordom
    2. Solution? COMM.01 - RLPP/Jury over Telecom regulation
    3. Portable phone numbers
    4. Advantages of COMM.01
    5. Draft of the act to create procedure COMM.01


    The problem with Regulatordom

    The word "regulator" is creating unnecessary hype -- a regulator is nothing but a regular officer(babu) or a judge, or a cross. Instead of a seperate word "regulator" the word "judge" would have had been more appropriate, becuase most regulators suffer from the problems judges do -- their nexuses with lawyers and company-owners.

    So called "regulatory capture" is nothing but a euphenism for regulator-lawyer nexus or regulator-oligopolists nexus. This euphenism is just a term used to cover this dirty nexuses.

    Why are nexuses in regulators so rampant? First, the regulators are appointed by PM or Minister of concerned departments. The PM/Minister have dense nexuses with wealhy oligopoly owners. These owners actovely lobby to ensure that a puppet dear to them becomes the regulator. The PM/Ministers would also like that a officer/judge dear to the becomes regulator. So all in all, only an individual with dense nexuses with Ministers/oligopoly-owners becomes a regulator. So its not just that nexuses get formed after a person becomes regulator, the person is pre-nexused. And after he becomes regulator, he comes into every day contact with same small number of lawyers who plead for oligopoly companies, and same oligopoly owners. So the nexuses further become more and more denser. And worst part is that, as of today, citizens of India have no way to recall/expel a regulator. No wonder, regulators retard competition, at the cost of customers.



    Solution ? COMM.01 - RLPP/Jury over Telecom regulation

    Following are the procedures I propose
    1. The Telecom Minister will appoint a Central Telecom Regulator in-charge of regulating fixed phone companies, mobile phone companies and cable companies (as today)

    2. The Telecom Minister will also appoint District Telecom Regulator for each district.

    3. The National/District Telecom Regulators will decide a small surcharge over every phone and cable connection, not exceeding Rs 20/user/year, to run their offices.

    4. The Minister will appoint one Registrar per district, or hand over the responsibility of Registrar to an existing officer.

    5. RLPP over Central Telecom Regulator : Any citizen can walk to Registrar's office and approve at most 5 candidates for the position of Central Telecom Regulator. If any candidate has approval of over 25% of ALL citizens, and his approvals are 1% higher than existing Regulator, the Minister will expel the existing Central Regulator and appoint the highest approved candidate as new Central Telecom Regulator.
      (for details, pls see RLPP over officer.)

    6. RLPP over District Telecom Regulator : [similar to above]

    7. Jury System over District Telecom Regulation : The District Telecom Regulator will use an existing Grand Jury, or will make another Grand Jury of 30 Jurors. If any citizen has complaint against a staff member of District Telecom Regulator, or any telecom/cable/mobile phone company in that district, he can approach the Grand Jury. If over 15 Grand Jurors see prima facie truth, the Regulator will summon a Jury of 12 randomly chosen citizens from that District.

    8. If over 8 out of 12 Jurors decide a fine on the telecom company, and if the company does not pay that fine within 30 days, the District Regulator will suspend that company within 7 days. If over 8 out of 12 Jurors decide that the said employee of District Telecom Company is NOT fit to serve citizens, the Regulator will expel him within 24 hours.

    9. Jury System over National Telecom Regulation : If any citizen has complaint against a staff member of National Telecom Regulator, or any telecom/cable/mobile phone company in India, the Regulator will pick 3 districts out of 15 nearest district from where citizen lives, and will forward the complains to the Grand Jurors of those 3 districts. The accused will be considered guilty ONLY if 8 Jurors out of 12 in at least two Juries convict the accused.

    10. Appeal against judgement of District Jury : Any party can appeal against the judgement of the District Jury before the National Regulator. The Regulator will pick 3 districts at random, and forward the Appeal to those 3 Grand Juries. If over 2 Juries' over 8 out of 12 Jurors vote against the first judgement, the judgement will stand cancelled. Otherwise, it will be considered upheld.

    11. The Regulator in addition will make rules to regulate the telecom sector. If a telecom company violates the rule, the Juries decide the punishment.



    Portable phone numbers

    A phone number is portable if it does NOT change even when the customer changes company. One of the immidiate advantage is that porrtable numbers would come into existence within a few weeks after COMM.01 come sinto existence. Why? Today the technology is already there, but thanks to regulators' nexuses with incumbent telecom companies, the regulators are deliberately NOT issuing orders to telecom companies to implement portable numbers.

    The RLPP will enable citizens to FORCE regulators to issue the necessary orders, or face explusion, to implement portable number.

    The avilability of portable numbers will increase the competition and the reduce cost/price of phone connections and calls.



    Advantages of COMM.01

    COMM.01 will make telecom regulation less nexusprone, and thus fairer. So telecommunication will become more competitive and thus less expensive for users.



    Draft of the act to create procedure COMM.01

    I have drafted the text for "RLPP/Jury over Telecom Regulation", which if passed by Parliament of India will enable citizens to regulate telecom companies in a nexusless way. To see the draft, please click here.

         Now citizens can ask MPs to pass this Act. But IMO, it will be wiser for citizens to first enact procedure LM.03, and then use LM.03 to pass this COMM.01 draft WITHOUT any help from MPs. To know about procedure LM.03, please click here.



    If you have any other question, please mail it to MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com. Thousand thanks in advance.





    Next - COMM.02 : Creating multi-company wire network