The Hindu Business Line : TRAI mandates open access to cable landing stations

New Delhi April 13 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday proposed to mandate VSNL, Bharti and Reliance to allow open access to their respective under sea cable landing stations to other international long-distance (ILD) operators and ISPs in a non-discriminatory and fair manner.

In a draft regulation, the three companies have been asked to offer access within a fixed timeframe.

Currently, there are six cable landing stations in the country of which four are controlled by the Tata-managed VSNL.

Bharti and Reliance have a landing station each in Chennai and Mumbai respectively.

On the other hand, there are 11 ILD operators and more than 30 ISPs offering international bandwidth to Indian enterprises and IT-enabled services.

"Control of international capacities, cable landing stations and associated facilities by only few operators can enable the owners to stall or delay entry of new operators," said the TRAI in a consultation paper to discuss the draft regulation.

The TRAI has asked owners of cable landing stations to publish the `Cable Landing Station - Reference Interconnect Offer,' containing the terms and conditions, charges and time limit for providing access.

"Proposed regulation would enable the timely provision of international bandwidth connectivity at cable landing stations in a fair, equitable, transparent and non-discriminatory manner," the TRAI said.

According to TRAI estimates, only 15 per cent of the available bandwidth is being currently utilised.

The regulation benefits new entrants in the ILD segment like AT&T, Sify and BT, apart from the large number of BPOs in the country that use international bandwidth.

The proposed regulation ensures that operators having control over cable landing do not unduly delay activated capacity and make bandwidth available at competitive rates, the TRAI said.

It added that in the absence of a regulation, there is a scope for delay in provisioning of access to the capacity acquired by the competing operators, from incumbent ILDs and others with significant market power from owning cable landing stations.

"Problems are being faced by operators who have acquired capacity in a submarine cable system from foreign carriers wishing to access such capacity at the cable landing station of an existing operator," the telecom regulator said.