KOLKATA: Following a multistage consultation process, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released recommendations on cloud services.
The regulatory body issued a consultation paper on 23 October 2019 inviting inputs on the number of industry bodies, requirements for any CSP to become a member of an industry body, membership fee, governance structure and initial seeding of the industry body, etc. for comments and counter comments from stakeholders. Subsequently, an Open House Discussion (OHD) was held on 28 February 2020 at Delhi, where stakeholders participated and deliberated on the issues.
The salient features of the recommendations are:
. Initiating a light-touch regulatory framework by setting up an industry body through a three-step process: enrollment of CSPs operating in India; formation of an ad hoc body to frame broad rules, organizational structure, election procedure, etc.; and the election of office-bearers to take over it’s functioning as a regular industry-led body.
. Industry body to be registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and to be formed using the approach followed for the formation of the M2M body by DoT.
. Scope of Cloud Service Providers, initially, to be limited to cloud service providers of Infrastructure as a Service (laaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) who are providing services in India.
. Telecom Service Providers not to be allowed to share infrastructure and platforms related to Telegraph with a Cloud Service Provider (CSP] who is not a member of CSPs’ industry body registered with DoT.
. The industry body so created to review its experience and further deliberate upon the need to form multiple bodies for different purposes, such as to address requirements of different market segments. DoT may require this review after two years of commencement of the functioning. of the first industry body, or such time as it considers appropriate.
