• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

Mumbai , March 16

THE Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is not keen to pass a binding order on the Videsh Sanchar Nigam-FLAG-Reliance Infocomm issue since it believes that the international bandwidth situation will be resolved in a few months.

"We have given them a week's time to settle their dispute, failing which we would have to intervene," said Mr Pradip Baijal, Chairman, TRAI, on the sidelines of a meeting at the BSE here on Tuesday. However, the authority understands that there are more landing stations and international bandwidth coming into the market over the next few months. "We would not like to issue an order just to resolve a situation that can last only a few months," he said.

The dispute relates to a complaint from Reliance Infocomm made to TRAI that VSNL was denying it access to FLAG bandwidth. VSNL currently owns the landing station of FLAG.

The consultation paper for a fully unified licence regime has been put up by the regulator, said Mr Baijal. (Currently, there is only a unified access regime in place). This would take around five months to come about, he said.

A consultation paper on the Internet and broadband access is in the pipeline, said Mr Baijal. The government is keen to improve Internet penetration from the current level of 4 out of 1,000, and broadband penetration from the current ratio of 2 for every 10,000 persons in the country. The gold mine is in the 42 million telephones and 50 million cable connections which can be tweaked to provide broadband Internet access, he said. "The next year will seen an explosion of broadband in the country," he said.

Now that TRAI has been appointed regulator for broadcasting as well, it could deal with the convergence issue, said Mr Baijal. The only gap now left between TRAI's realm of control and the convergence bill is content, he said.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Corporate Disputes

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Outsourcing backlash a blessing in disguise for IT cos?

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line