General News: TRAI withdraws two tariff amendment orders set aside by TDSAT and SC

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NEW DELHI: Observing that there is healthy growth in the industry with rise in revenues outstripping the increasing inflation over the years, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has decided that two inflation linked Tariff Amendment Orders issued by it in 2014 and set aside by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal are not required at present.
The Supreme Court had on an appeal from the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and another party also upheld the TDSAT order setting aside the amendments in two tariff orders which had sought to put an inflation-linked hike of 27.5 per cent on addressable and non-addressable systems.  
Holding the Telecommunication (Broadcasting & Cable) Services (Second) Tariff (Eleventh Amendment) Order 2014 of March 2014 and ‘The Telecommunication (Broadcasting & Cable) Services (Second) Tariff (Thirteenth Amendment) Order 2014 of December that year were ‘untenable’, the tribunal had said it thought TRAI “will be well advised to have a fresh look at the various tariff orders in a holistic manner and come out with a comprehensive tariff order in supersession of all the earlier tariff orders.”
“While doing so, it may consider all the agreements and relevant data available with it. It may consider differentiating between content which is of a monopolistic nature as against that the like of which is shown by other channels also.”
In its latest order, TRAI said,"During analysis of relevant data and the impact of various factors on the issue of inflationlinked hikes in tariff ceilings at the wholesale levels”, it had observed that the “annual   revenues that actually accrued to the broadcasters had surpassed the estimated revenues that should have accrued to them after taking into account the year-on-year inflation as calculated using the GDP deflator. The compounded annual growth rate of the revenues accruing year-on-year to the broadcasters has also witnessed a positive growth. More importantly, this growth has kept well ahead of the estimate revenues compensated for the year-on-year change in the inflation using the GDP deflator.”

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