The Hindu Business Line : Need to rectify

This is with reference to "TRAI proposes lower duties for broadband push" (Business Line, April 30). Broadband in India will definitely benefit businesses but, more importantly, will improve efficiency of social sectors such as telemedicine, online education and training/retraining — which are especially required as technologies change, competition increases and globalisation accelerates.

Broadband is a kind of safety network for every home — popularising this would improve citizen welfare. TRAI should have opened up high bandwidth digital infrastructures through satellite uplinking facilities of DD (it has recommended opening up skies for DTH and VSATs correctly) as well as digital terrestrial transmissions facilities in the metros — along with what it is doing for BSNL.

Simultaneously, it has ignored the 4Gbps one-way capacity of coax cable connecting 45 million TV homes in India, instead of using it to give better cost-advantage. This must be rectified. Free import of PCs will only kill existing manufacturing instead of encouraging low-cost devices, which use TV as display for manufacture in India.

S Ravindran

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