The Hindu Business Line : `TRAI hasn't focussed on bandwidth pricing'

IN its recommendations on the broadband sector, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), say service providers, should have focused on bandwidth pricing, a major stumbling block in the growth of Internet.

``I have been speaking to several ISPs (Internet service providers), and they all seem very unhappy with the guidelines. We feel that TRAI should have used the opportunity to make a definitive statement on bandwidth pricing, which is part of its duty as the regulator,'' the Internet Service Providers' Association of India (ISPAI) President, Mr Amitabh Singhal, told Business Line.

Mr Singhal said that the last time bandwidth prices were reviewed in 1999 and TRAI was to look at the issue once in every 12 months. ``The cost of leased lines continues to be very high and it is in their powers to reduce the prices,'' he said.

The TRAI Chairman, Mr Pradip Baijal, said that a lot of capacity had been built up and with the overall freeing up of the sector, market forces will bring down prices in the near-term.

Mr Singhal said that the industry was also upset with TRAI for not tackling the issue of unbundling more directly. ``We have been hearing that the incumbents should unbundle their last mile copper network. But has it cut any ice with BSNL? As the regulator, TRAI should have done something more concrete to ensure that BSNL shares its copper networks with ISPs, instead of leaving it to its discretion,'' he said.

In its recommendations, TRAI has suggested unbundling of the local loop through shared or bit stream access but left it on the incumbent operators to work out the exact model.

BSNL officials were not available for comment.

Mr Singhal, however, welcomed the suggestions on reducing duties and service tax exemptions for the broadband sector.

Meanwhile, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), whose recent report on broadband was used extensively by TRAI to work out its recommendations, welcomed the guidelines.

``The recommendations will remove bottlenecks in proliferation of broadband in the country. Besides, the recommendations will see India emerge as a leader and role model in the field of broadband deployment,'' the Chamber President, Mr Anand Mahindra, said.

Mr Rajiv Sharma, the Chief Executive Officer (Broadband and Data), Bharti group, also welcomed the recommendations saying that both GSM (Global System for Mobile) and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile operators would benefit from greater penetration of broadband and internet in the country.

``While broadband cannot be made available on mobile phones, we feel that the move will spur the development of more applications and lead to at least 10 per cent of our subscribers switching to using their mobile phones for data services. That itself translates into a million users,'' Mr Sharma said.

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