'Regulation is a tricky job'

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The government has entrusted the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India with
a new job - regulating sections of the entertainment industry. In a rare
interview, TRAI chairman Pradip Baijal tells that TRAI's new task poses
several challenges.
Excerpts:
What are the main challenges TRAI faces after the government mandated it to
regulate the broadcasting and cable industry?
All over the world it has been recognised that voice, data and pictures are
carried on the same media. So the carriage has converged because of
technology. If the carriage has converged, you cannot have a different
regulatory environment for carriage on the same wire. So regulators all over
the world regulate telephony, TV and broadcasting. In the UK and the US the
regulator regulates both content and carriage. In 2000 the law makers
amended the TRAI Act and added a clause which said that any service other
than telephony can be so declared that it will become a telephony service
for the purpose of this Act. Through a notification, the government has done
precisely that: it has declared broadcasting and TV to be telephony
services. By virtue of this notification you have converged carriage. There
are six million PCs, 55 million cable homes, 43 million telephone lines. You
can now use this entire medium for telephony, internet and for cable
television. So it gives subscribers many options at a cheaper price.

Source:
http://www.business-standard.com/ice/story.asp?Menu=7&story=35033