In an interview with The Financial Express, Sodhi says that the nation will have to make a choice between a liberalised telecom sector and a monoplistic department of telecom. Excerpts:

On the new telecom policy '99 vis-a-vis the entry of additional operators in cellular services.

The new telecom policy (NTP) 1999, talks about the need for introduction of new service providers to be recommended by TRAI. As per the policy, it is essential for the government to see our recommendations before any new service provider is allowed.

But this rule is not always being followed. A case in point is MTNL. The nigam does not require TRAI recommendation for entering the cellular market,but for other private players, this recommendation is needed. Why this dichotomy?

So here we have a scenario where the government takes its own regulator to court. The case has been pending in court for over two years now and MTNL's cellular entry has been delayed. Had the matter come to us, we would have had public consultations and made our recommendations in two months. The government would then have been free to do what it pleased.

Instead, the whole thing has become messy. The Delhi high court has reduced the role of the regulator to that of a tariff setter.

On the role of TRAI given the frequent conflict with the government.

The nation has to decide whether it wants liberalisation or it wants a monopoly of a dominant operator.

If everybody feels that DoT can serve the nation's interests better, then TRAI has no role to play. It is redundant. However, if the government feels that our interest can be served better through privatisation and competition, then there should be a level-playingfield for the entire sector. Rules of the game cannnot be set by the dominant operator.

There is a conflict of interest as DoT seeks to reserve its rights both as service provider and regulator. On the one hand it issues licences and is a service provider while on the other, it seeks to regulate, formulate policies, introduce services and also lay down the rules of competition against itself. This is an incongruous situation and has caused all sorts of problems.

On the dispute-settlement role of TRAI

As per the Usha Mehra judgement, TRAI has no jurisdiction to adjucticate licensor and licensee disputes. NTP '99 says that TRAI must be strengthened and for achieving this, it will be made the arbitrator for licensee-licensor disputes under the Arbitration Act. The question that begs an answer is why is that the same set of people -- that is TRAI -- will decide disputes between DoT and any other service provider under the TRAI Act, while in the case of disputes between DoT as a licensor and any otherservice provider as licensee, it can do so only under the Arbitration Act.

We have not got any explanation for this. Incidentally, we have legal opinion from Fali Nariman according to which conferring this power upon us is illegal. At the same time, we believe that private operators have obtained a similar opinion from former Delhi high court chief justice Rajinder Sacchar.

Most of the issues, if not all, raise some licensor-licensee disputes and as things stand today, TRAI has virtually no jurisdiction in dispute settlement. If the disputes don't come to TRAI they will go to an arbitrator that will be appointed by the director general of telecom. In comparison, this process is time consuming and expensive.

On TRAI favouring low revenue share for private telecom operators

This is an important issue that has been referred to us, but the point to be noted is that this is by virtue of the whim and discretion of the powers that be for the time being. Whereas if you want to build up the credibilityof the regulator, this must be backed with statutory sanctions. On revenue sharing again there is a choice before the nation -- whether we want to generate revenue or to promote affordability. Whatever does an operator charge, by way of licence fee or revenue sharing, the burden eventually falls on the consumer.

One of our functions is to protect the interests of the consumer. This is often misinterpreted as our favouring the operators. Consumers can expect a reduction in tariffs now.

On TRAI's plans

Our pipeline is choked. We have a whole lot of things in mind. In fact, one of the areas that we are very keen on is the quality of services. We have got comments on the initial consultation paper and another paper on this will come out soon. We are bringing in the concept of timeframe for dealing with problems.