TRAI: subsidise broadband services

NEW DELHI: Issuing draft recommendations on ‘Growth of broadband’ on Monday to solicit the comments of stakeholders, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has called for subsidising broadband services to increase its reach. It has also sought utilisation of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund to give subsidy for providing broadband services through satellite in remote and hilly areas.

TRAI has also recommended that the state-owned telecom companies — BSNL and MTNL — should be encouraged to appoint franchisees for providing broadband services to supplement their efforts, while the Government should ensure availability of more number of transponders to roll out broadband services through the Direct-to-Home (DTH) platform. To increase the competition to provide broadband in rural areas, at least two service providers seeking minimum subsidy should be identified, it added.

TRAI has also called for encouraging municipal committees to include a clause for making multiple dwelling units broadband-ready by adopting suitable internal wiring while giving clearance for the construction of all such buildings in future.

Besides encouraging Indian manufacturers to produce more customer premise equipment (CPE) to provide broadband using DSL technology, the Government should expedite decision on TRAI’s recommendations 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, it added.

TRAI said the Government announced the Broadband Policy in 2004 and made certain projections for broadband subscribers’ growth. In order to facilitate growth of broadband, TRAI took certain regulatory initiatives from time to time. However, the authority observed that even after taking various initiatives, the growth is slow and below the expected level.

The Authority felt an urgent need to identify various impediments affecting the growth of broadband and adopted forward looking approach to address all such impediments in a time bound manner. While framing the draft recommendations, efforts have been made to identify all possible options to boost the broadband growth, TRAI added. Based on the feedback of stakeholders, the draft recommendations will be finalised and will be sent to the Government.