CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 29 of 120

Correct — A, Digital Communications Commission. This is the apex decision-making body inside the Department of Telecommunications, in the Ministry of Communications. It was set up in 1989 as the Telecom Commission and renamed the Digital Communications Commission in October 2018, and it is the forum in which the Department's policy is settled, its budget prepared and its decisions carried into effect. Everything in the stem points at it rather than at the other three: the phrase is 'implementation of the Government of India's policy', which is an executive job belonging to a government department, not a regulatory job belonging to a statutory authority and not a commercial job belonging to a public sector company. The strongest way to reach the answer, if the Commission's name is unfamiliar, is by elimination — each of the other three has a documented role that is demonstrably something else.

• (b)Telecom Regulatory Authority of India — The one that costs marks. TRAI is a regulator, not an executor. By its own account it 'was established with effect from 20th February 1997 by an Act of Parliament, called the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997, to regulate telecom services, including fixation/revision of tariffs for telecom services which were earlier vested in the Central Government.' It fixes tariffs, sets quality-of-service and interconnection rules and makes recommendations to the licensor; the Government decides policy and its own department implements it. TRAI's adjudicatory work was taken away in January 2000 and given to a separate tribunal, TDSAT.
• (c)Telecom Advisory Committee — The name gives it away — an advisory body advises. Telecom Advisory Committees exist at the level of parliamentary constituencies and telecom circles as forums for consumer grievances and local feedback; none of them implements national policy.
• (d)Telecommunications Consultants India Limited — TCIL is a Central Public Sector Undertaking under the Department of Telecommunications — an engineering and consultancy company that executes telecom projects in India and abroad. A government-owned company that bids for and builds projects is not the body that carries out national policy.

Indian telecom governance has three layers that the examiners like to shuffle. The policy and executive layer is the Ministry of Communications, and within it the Department of Telecommunications, whose apex body is the Digital Communications Commission. The regulatory layer is TRAI, a statutory authority created in 1997 once private operators entered a market that the Government itself had run, together with the appellate tribunal TDSAT created in 2000 to hear disputes and appeals. The commercial layer is the public sector undertakings — BSNL, MTNL, ITI and TCIL — which are companies, not authorities. Separate those three and almost every telecom institutions question answers itself.

This item is really a test of whether a student can tell a department from a regulator. The clue is the verb: 'implementation of the Government of India's policy'. A regulator does not implement the Government's policy; that is precisely the independence it was created to have. The name in the key is also a small current-affairs check, because the body was the Telecom Commission for nearly thirty years and was renamed only in 2018, so anyone whose notes predate that will not recognise it. One honesty note on sourcing: the Department of Telecommunications now serves its web pages from a script-driven system that would not yield to a plain fetch, so the Commission's charter could not be quoted here word for word. The card therefore rests its argument on what could be verified — TRAI's own statement of what it was set up to do, and TCIL's listed status as a public sector undertaking under the Department — rather than on a paraphrase nobody checked. As of the present day, the layering described here is unchanged, though the underlying law is not: the Telecommunications Act, 2023 has replaced the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1933 as the governing statute.

• The Digital Communications Commission is the apex body of the Department of Telecommunications; it was the Telecom Commission from 1989 until it was renamed in October 2018.
• TRAI was established with effect from 20 February 1997 under the TRAI Act, 1997, to regulate telecom services including the fixing and revision of tariffs previously set by the Central Government.
• The TRAI Act was amended with effect from 24 January 2000 to create TDSAT, which took over TRAI's adjudicatory and dispute functions and hears appeals against TRAI's orders.
• TCIL is one of the Central Public Sector Undertakings under the Department of Telecommunications — a consultancy and project company, not a policy or regulatory body.
• The Department of Telecommunications sits in the Ministry of Communications alongside the Department of Posts.

• Treating TRAI as the executive arm of telecom policy; it was created to be independent of exactly that role.
• Not knowing that the Telecom Commission was renamed the Digital Communications Commission in October 2018, and rejecting the correct option because the name looks new.
• Confusing a public sector undertaking such as TCIL or BSNL with a policy or regulatory body.

As an institution-to-function match, or as a statements item asking which body regulates, which advises and which implements.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India was established under an Act of Parliament in which year?

  • (a)1985
  • (b)1994
  • (c)1997
  • (d)2000

  Answer(c) 1997 — TRAI came into existence with effect from 20 February 1997 under the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Disputes between a licensor and a licensee in the Indian telecom sector, and appeals against orders of TRAI, are heard by

  • (a)the Digital Communications Commission
  • (b)TDSAT
  • (c)the Competition Commission of India
  • (d)the Department of Telecommunications

  Answer(b) TDSAT — the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, created by an amendment to the TRAI Act with effect from 24 January 2000.