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The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday issued recommendations on "Promoting Local Manufacturing in the Television Broadcasting Sector".

After considering comments received from stakeholders during the consultation process and further analysis of the issues, the Authority has finalised its recommendations.

It said that there is a need to focus on emerging technologies and tenets of the era of convergence and aim at building an ecosystem for broadcast equipment.

Centre of Excellence may be established for broadcast equipment or existing Telecom Centres of Excellence may be upgraded to focus on broadcast equipment as well.

The recommendations talk about enabling organisations like Telecom Export Promotion Council (TEPC) or some similarly placed organisation to promote and facilitate exports of locally manufactured broadcast equipment.

Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), Department of Telecommunications, should be mandated to test and standardise all the broadcast equipment, it added.

It also included strengthening existing R&D centres in the public sector, such as C-DOT, developing the local R&D ecosystem along with industry participation through the PPP route and creating 'Technology development Fund' to promote R&D and development of local products/technologies for the broadcasting sector.

It said that a go-to market strategy may also be adopted for the products developed through local R&D and linear set-up boxes should be brought under the PLI scheme.

"Periodically review the availability of indigenous components required for broadcasting equipment, including chipsets. The availability of local components will be taken into consideration while setting the localisation levels under the PLI scheme. Review the investment outlay required for obtaining benefits under the PLI scheme with a view to promote manufacturing by MSME for some selected equipment as may be identified from time-to-time," says the recommendations.

It also said to promote local manufacturing of other relevant components of the television broadcasting sector along the lines of Semicon India Program and to define the scope of 'local manufacturing' for different equipment categories in the television broadcasting sector in terms of the percentage of the locally sourced components/services.

The recommendations also include reviewing FTAs and such agreements with regard to their impact on local manufacturing in the television broadcasting sector.

The Authority with the objective of realistically assessing India's true potential in equipment manufacturing and to arrive at the recommendations to the Indian government that would enable Indian broadcasting equipment manufacturing sector to transition from an import-dependent sector to a global hub of indigenous manufacturing, has suo-motu issued a consultation paper on "Promoting Local Manufacturing in the Television Broadcasting Sector" on December 22, 2021, for seeking comment of all the stakeholders.