Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Dec 18, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Dec 18, 2002 |
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eWorld
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Internet Setting the pace
The New Telecom Policy 1994 (NTP '94) had set the tone for introduction and licensing of various value-added services in the country and in due course, some service providers began offering e-mail services. The usage was mostly by corporates and based on X.400 platform, in addition some educational institutes and software units had basic access to the Internet. Internet services were made available to the public with effect from August 15, 1995, when VSNL, then the state-owned monopoly in the International Long Distance Operator (ILDO), started offering Internet services in six cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune). On November 6, 1998, a new ISP policy was announced to facilitate and encourage the entry of private sector and other players in this field as ISPs. New packages, new locations and reduction in tariffs, coupled with a few of the new dotcom ISPs offering free access, fuelled the initial growth of the Internet throughout the country. A corresponding growth in PC penetration and increase in tele-density also helped the case. While during 1995-1998, people used to access the Internet because they had computers, by the year 2000 people began acquiring computers because they wanted to access the Internet. Of late, the growth of the Internet in the country has not kept pace with the expectation of various agencies. TRAI started monitoring Internet services in the country through Performance Monitoring Reports (PMR) from ISPs on quarterly basis. The figures obtained by TRAI indicate that subscriber base growth was 22 per cent through the period March 2000-March 2001, which declined to 12 per cent for the period March 2001-March 2002. At this stage of development the growth rate is not sufficient and hence the need for special steps like the NIXI to accelerate this.
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