Regulating over the limit
The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) was established to regulate the Telecommunications industry and to create the optimum conditions for the telecommunication industry in Sri Lanka by serving the public interest in terms of quality, choice and value for money.
Now at first glance the TRCSL seemed to be serving the people by reducing broadband prices and improving internet speeds but recently the Commission has forgotten its main objective of serving people and swung away into making Inland Revenue better by regulating what people should do and how they should do it.
Banning the import of mobile phones without TRCSL approval stating it as a “Health risk” was one of the first actions and it was a not but a mirage to make sure companies who locally sell mobile phones in the country don’t lose market. Mobile phones on the international market are far cheaper and provides a better range for consumers to chose from. Instead of the fairly limited range available locally. However this ability is no longer possible in Sri Lanka. The argument of radiation values and cancers are really not convincing due to the fact that brain tumors have been found on people who never used a mobile phone. If the health risk was the issue, they could have setup monitoring stations to approve mobiles at customs locations instead of just banning it all together not to mention that some phones come from countries with far more regulations.
Another issue was broadband speed limits. At a time where International Backbone prices are extremely high and the number of users and their usage extremely large TRCSL has stepped into forcing operators to stay above a green line on speed provided to a user. This is a good thing, but given the fact that they lowered broadband prices and asked the operators to increase speeds the operators have come to a bottleneck effect where they cannot provide this speed to all users thus operators have marked a majority of users who use large volumes of data as Heavy Users and slowed them down so that they can stay above the green line. These sudden actions by both TRCSL and broadband operators without proper planning and feasibility study have driven a portion of consumers into great confusion and inconvenience. A Gigabyte of data in the country now costs around Rs. 300/-. Looking at the total usages of consumers it is clearly visible that many cannot afford such massive bills. In this calamity, Operators have implemented unacceptable Fair User Policy’s to unlimited usage packages providing a limited but unlimited service in terms of law. Higher Flat rate to all consumers is a must for operators to keep services truly unlimited. TRCSL's perspective is to charge per Gigabyte thus giving more inland revenue.
VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol became an extremely popular method to provide cheap international calls, but sadly as these calls don’t pay revenue to the government and due to the fact that local operators lose market as they cannot provide these cheap rates, TRCSL decided to ban VoIP on Internet Services. And now TRCSL is stepping into the banning of foreign Satellite TV services again pointing the fact of “local operators lose market, no inland revenue” forgetting that most operators in the country don’t give the consumer all the channels he or she wants.
TRCSL has today effectively regulated the consumer like a caged animal and has removed his freedom to choice products and services and limiting his access to technology but while increasing government revenue, which brings the question, why was the TRCSL established in the first place?
I ask any media who remembers to true meaning of media to publish this.
-Chirantha Amerasinghe
Aged 20
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