The infotech sector took off because it was not as heavily regulated as manufacturing. The trick is to regulate sectors just enough to facilitate competition and ensure a fair playing field for everybody, without intervening in its day-to-day functioning.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is within its brief when it enforces consumer rights, as it did recently when it issued a directive that number portability between service providers should be made available to all mobile phone users.

And it must be able to enforce its regulations by penalising players who violate them, as a Supreme Court order has held.

But it may be overstepping its brief when it hauled up a service provider for offering lifetime validity for a certain service, then retracting it.

Any savvy consumer understands that nothing is guaranteed to last a lifetime — companies can even cease to exist within that time. An advertisement offering a service for a lifetime is simply using a metaphor for something that lasts a long time.

By its very nature advertising is ephemeral and relies on vague and ambiguous claims, which are seldom taken literally by the consumer. Markets, if allowed to operate freely, eventually make their own judgment about the worth of a product.

A telecom company may advertise excellent voice quality over its network even if reality belies this. It is up to the consumer to make this judgment and switch to another network.

TRAI can legislate a minimum voice quality that all networks must support; beyond that, it must be left to the market to decide who offers the best service.

It is this trick of light regulation, which leaves enough space for consumer demand to assert itself and the market to make its choices, that we must learn.

(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com)