ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: The 6th South Asian Telecommunications Regulators Council (SATRC) on Wednesday focused on issues pertaining to quality of service, numbering and tariff- re balancing, management of spectrum, roaming in cellular services, licensing procedures and grey-market used for illegal international traffic.

Amarendra Narayan, Executive Director, APT, co-chaired all the sessions of the council, which is being held under the auspices of Asia Pacific Tele community (APT) at a local hotel.

Khondkar MD. Abu Baker, Commissioner Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission (BTRC), presided over the first session during which Pradip Baijal, Chairman Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), stressed the need for introduction of a tough competition, non-discrimination, timely action, flexibility in keeping with the market on the part of the regulator for the promotion of telecom industry.

He informed the meeting that TRAI had borrowed the idea of Calling Party Pays (CPP) from Pakistan and that India had introduced Unified Licensing System (ULS) to encourage small operators to cover rural and remote areas of India.

In the second session, which was presided over by Pradip Baijal (TRAI), Engineer F. Khuram, Ministry of Communication of Afghanistan, said steps were being taken by Afghan government to open up telecom sector to the private companies.

He said since the mobile operators and fixed line services offered by the government-owned Afghan Telecom were not accessible to the remote and mountainous areas, GMPCS licences had been issued to Thuraya Satellite Company which offered services through PCOs. He also said the country was planning to employ the services of specialists through APT, ITU and USAID for the development of telecommunication.

Massoud Chitsaz, Chairman, ICT, Iran, presided over the third session during which Awais Malik of Mobilink (Pakistan) and Khondkar MD Abu Bakar of BTRC presented their papers on the theme of roaming in cellular services.