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their application. Where appropriate, LCA will request regular reports from select operators, and
will request additional information in case of an investigation. LCA will impose penalties that are
severe enough to act as an effective deterrent, while being proportionate and non-discriminatory.
In serious cases that warrant imposition of criminal sanctions - such as fraudulent or destructive
conduct - LCA will refer matters to the courts for judicial enforcement.

3.1.4 Functions of the LCA
As a converged regulator, LCA will perform the following principal functions, which are
applicable to all three communications sectors. LCA will be reorganized along these functional
lines.

Authorisation
LCA will perform several functions relating to the granting of authority to provide services or use
equipment.
•

Licensing. LCA will publish licensing criteria designed to facilitate new entry, and will award
licenses in a technology-neutral fashion in order to facilitate the deployment of new
technologies and reap the benefits of convergence. License fees will be published in advance,
and will be set at a reasonable level.

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Allocation and assignment of scarce resources. LCA will be responsible for allocating scarce
resources, such as radio spectrum and telephone numbers.3 LCA will ensure efficient usage of
these resources, while promoting entry and innovation in new advanced wireless networks. As
long as spectrum supply remains available, fees will remain low. As demand increases,
however, fees will be raised in order to ensure that resources are made available for efficient
use. LCA will not use auctions to allocate scarce resources.

•

Technical standards. LCA will adopt and enforce technical standards governing both services
and equipment. These standards will be imposed, where needed, to ensure compatibility
between networks and customer premise equipment, prevent interference, and adopt
international standards to benefit from lower prices resulting from scale economies.

The Policy recognizes the importance of another scarce resource, Internet Domain Names,
whose assignments are critical to the formation of a well-functioning information society. In
order to ensure the involvement of all relevant stakeholders, the Government will facilitate
the creation of an independent body for both assigning this resource and also interacting with
ICANN and other relevant international bodies involved in Internet resource allocation.

Select target paragraph3