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TRAI for immediate measures to boost broadband growth
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 05 January 2008, 01:15 IST
New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)has asked the Government to take immediate measures to boost the usage of high speed Internet in the country.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) lists India at the bottom of 34 countries in a report which has ranked countries based on the broadband penetration.
India is not only below developed countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. but also far below even smaller countries such as Denmark and Iceland. While China added 3.32 million broadband connections in a quarter, India added just 0.08 million.
Though DoT had set a target of nine million subscribers by 2007, only about three million were met so far. The telecom regulator issued another set of recommendations on Wednesday reiterating the suggestions made earlier. It said that the last mile local loop owned by the State owned BSNL and MTNL should be opened up for franchisees to offer broadband services.
BSNL and MTNL were supposed to provide 1.5 million broadband connections by the end of 2005 whereas actually they could provide only 0.5 million by 2005. "Even at the end of March 2007, BSNL and MTNL together have provided just 1.45 million broadband connections using DSL technology. As such the available copper loop to provide broadband connections have not been effectively utilized," TRAI said.
The regulator also urged DoT to expedite decision 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," the regulator said.
