The Hindu Business Line : TRAI to keep off cable code row

New Delhi, Feb. 8 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has decided against directly intervening in the dispute between under-sea cable operators – Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel and VSNL – over evolving a code for better co-operation in crisis situations.

Following recent damages to its under-sea cables, RCom had proposed to set up a mechanism whereby in times of a crisis, capacity would be made available to each other within 24 hours of a request by any of the under-sea cable operator. RCom had alleged that Bharti was not readily offering bandwidth and was charging higher tariffs compared to market rates at a time when two of its under-sea cables were damaged last week.

Both Bharti and VSNL countered that RCom was trying to cover its failure to have a redundant network by raking up a non-issue.

Acrimonious

At a meeting with the three operators today, TRAI said that the issues being raised by RCom should be mutually resolved without any direct regulatory intervention. The meeting was acrimonious with both sides accusing each other of impropriety. RCom officials present charged Bharti with being unfair by denying capacity citing upgradation of cable system even as Bharti was providing bandwidth to other customers. Bharti and VSNL executives countered that RCom was unnecessarily trying to drag the two companies into the issue to deflect its own failure.

Senior TRAI officials said that they would continue to monitor the situation, though there was no immediate plan of action on the issue.

The dispute arose after RCom’s two under-sea cables- FLAG and FALCON- had snapped causing major disruption in Internet services across the region last week. RCom has claimed that the cables were damaged due to ship anchorage in the Gulf region, though Egyptian authorities had ruled out any ship movement during that time. The damaged cables led to poor Internet services for 3-4 days after RCom found it difficult to route the traffic through an alternate cable quickly. Even as these cables have been restored, RCom blamed the other two Indian cable operators for not co-operating during the crunch situation.

Sources in Bharti pointed out that along with the Reliance owned cables, SEA-Me-WE-4 in which Bharti and VSNL have a stake had also been damaged. “We were able to restore our cable within 24 hours. We made sure that we had alternate cables for routing traffic during the time the SEA-ME-WE 4 was cut. The truth is RCom had not planned for such an eventuality and now they are looking for a scapegoat,” said a Bharti source.

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