The Hindu Business Line : DoT terminates ISP licences of 35 firms

There are still more than 100 licence holders who have not started offering services even after five years of getting the licences. This has affected Internet penetration.

Thomas K Thomas

New Delhi, April 18 In a bid to weed out non-serious players from the Internet sector, the Department of Telecom has terminated the licences of 35 companies, which had not started their services despite repeated reminders.

As per the ISP licence norms, operators are required to start service within two years of getting the licence.

Those who have got the boot include Discovery Infoways, Q-Net Infosystems, Netconnect (India), Infinity.com and KTV Net Pvt Ltd. Most of these companies had taken the licence when the Government was not charging any entry fee.

The DoT has sent termination notices to other non-functional ISPs as well.

The move is in line with DoT’s objective to bring large players into the Internet sector.

Liberal norms

The Government had initially set highly liberal entry norms for ISPs due to which 770 companies took licences. While only 275 ISPs started services, 397 licence holders quit, after the Government announced an exit policy.

However, there are still more than 100 licence holders who have not started offering services, even after five years of getting the licences.

Therefore, the growth of the Internet user-base has been sluggish, with the Government missing broadband targets for the last two years.

Entry fee

In order to discourage non-serious players from taking a licence, DoT has imposed an entry fee and an annual licence fee on Net service providers.

The DoT has also scrapped district level ISP category to encourage operators at the national and State levels.

The telecom regulator has also suggested taking strong measures to improve the ISP segment.

‘Mere numbers no good’

“A number of other countries have large number of Internet operators. But having just mere numbers is of no use if they don’t start service.

“Most ISPs in India are not contributing to the growth of the Internet segment, and that is the reason the number of Internet users has not grown, as we would have liked even after so many years.

“Our aim is to promote serious players in the sector, who will help us achieve our national goals,” said a DoT official.

Despite the large number of ISPs in the country, more than 90 per cent of the 10 million Internet subscribers are owned by the top 4 operators.

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