TRAI and CCI: no turf wars, please

Abstract

Arecent letter by the chairman of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), D.K. Sikri, to his counterpart at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), R.S. Sharma, has once again sparked a debate on turf wars between the competition regulator and sector-specific regulators in India. Sikri in his letter argued that the CCI is better placed to look into matters related to predatory pricing than Trai. This letter comes against the backdrop of a consultation paper floated by Trai in February, where the telecom sector regulator sought to deal with predatory pricing issues in the telecom sector. Hitherto, the understanding was that ex-ante competition matters fell in the domain of Trai, and ex-post matters such as predatory pricing were the turf of the CCI.