The Hindu Business Line : ISPs in talks to share infrastructure, bandwidth

Taking a cue from cellular operators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are planning to join hands to share infrastructure and bandwidth across the country. Forty-five ISPs under the aegis of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) are in discussion to use each other's infrastructure in a bid to take on competition from large integrated telecom players who are also offering Internet services.

Mr Rajesh Chharia, the newly appointed President of ISPAI, told Business Line, "At present Internet operators are functioning in isolation according to their respective licence areas. We are in discussion to evolve a mechanism that will for instance enable a category A Internet operator (with a countrywide licence) to use excess bandwidth available with category C ISP (city level)." On the other hand, the city-level ISP will generate more revenues from the arrangement. The move is aimed at enabling ISPs to use each other's resources in their respective areas of strength.

Mr Chharia said that once the deal is in place, the ISPs could also look at jointly rolling out a nationwide Wi-Max network for offering wireless broadband services.

Net telephony

The association, however, said that there were several bottlenecks that needed urgent attention from the Government in order to achieve the set target of 40 million Internet users by 2010. "We need level playing field. There are a large number of foreign operators such as Net2Phone, MSN and Skype who are offering Internet telephony without paying any licence fee, while we ISPs have to pay 6 per cent of our revenues to Government for offering the same service. Either they should also be asked to pay or the Government should waive off the charge for us also," said Col R.S. Perhar, Secretary, ISPAI.

The Government is loosing nearly Rs 1 crore every month in revenues as a result of such illegal telephony. DoT is likely to set up a joint working committee to resolve this issue.

TRAI suggestions opposed

The ISPAI also raised objections to the TRAI recommendations on 3G services which require city-based ISPs to migrate to circle level by paying a fee. The association said that it would force operators to shut shop. It also said that half of the spectrum earmarked for Wi-Max should be reserved for ISPs as they do not have the finances to enter into a competitive bidding with large telecom operators.