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Broadband target to be missed, open up local loop: TRAI to DoT
By agencies
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Friday, 04 November 2005, 20:30 IST
NEW DELHI: Concerned over the "slow" take-off of broadband services with only 0.61 million subscriber achievement vis-a-vis a target of three million, TRAI today asked the government to reconsider its proposal of unbundling the local loop and offer incentives to bring down the costs of the access.
As per the policy set out by government in October last year, a target of three million broadband subscribers was to be achieved by the end of 2005 by all service providers and half of that target was to be achieved by PSU operators.
But according to the progress report submitted by them, the current subscriber base of only 0.61 million for broadband have been achieved by September 2005, out of which 0.26 million belongs to PSUs and 0.35 million to the private service providers.
"Hence, the actual achievement by various operators together is much below the policy target of three million for December 2005 which is likely to be missed," the telecom regulator said.
TRAI, in a statement, has recommended to the department of telecom to review some of the provisions of the Broadband policy already announced.
Government has already rejected the TRAI proposal of unbundling the local loop that would have opened up access to private operators of BSNL and MTNL's over forty million wire line subscribers. BSNL had strongly opposed unbundling-fearing misuse by private players of luring away its customers.
