The Hindu Business Line : TRAI for immediate measures to boost broadband growth

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TRAI for immediate measures to boost broadband growth

Expresses concern over India’s poor rank in penetration levels

Boosting deployment
Last mile local loop owned by the State owned BSNL and MTNL should be opened up for franchisees to offer broadband services.
DoT urged to expedite decision regarding mechanism and pricing of spectrum for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access.
Govt urged to expedite the action on allowing resellers for international bandwidth as it will reduce Internet cost.

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Jan. 2 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has told the Government that India may miss the broadband bus if immediate measures are not taken to boost the usage of high speed Internet in the country.

The recent report of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) lists India at the bottom of 34 countries in which countries have been ranked based on the broadband penetration.

India is not only below developed countries such as the US and the UK but also far below even smaller countries such as Denmark and Iceland. China adds 3.32 million broadband connections in a quarter whereas India adds just 0.08 million.

TRAI said that it has been suggesting measures to boost broadband growth in India but the Government has not taken any action on the same.

DoT target

DoT had set a target of 9 million subscribers by 2007. This has not been met by far as there are just about 3 million broadband users at present.

The telecom regulator issued another set of recommendations on Wednesday reiterating the suggestions made earlier. It said that the last mile local loop owned by the State owned BSNL and MTNL should be opened up for franchisees to offer broadband services. BSNL and MTNL were supposed to provide 1.5 million broadband connections by the end of 2005 whereas actually they could provide only 0.5 million by 2005.

“Even at the end of March 2007, BSNL and MTNL together have provided just 1.45 million broadband connections using DSL technology. As such the available copper loop to provide broadband connections have not been effectively utilised,” TRAI said.

The regulator also urged DoT to expedite decision regarding mechanism and pricing of spectrum for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access. “Spectrum for 3G and WiMAX should be made available at the earliest to boost the deployment of broadband using these technologies,” the regulator said.

TRAI has said that the Government should expedite the action on allowing resellers for international bandwidth as it will reduce Internet cost.

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