Finally, TRAI urges Govt to boost broadband growth

:yahoo:New Delhi, Sept. 17 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday urged the Government to take urgent policy measures to boost broadband growth in the country including asking BSNL and MTNL to adopt a franchisee model whereby local players can use their copper lines to offer high speed Internet services.In a draft recommendation for broadband growth, TRAI has expressed concern that the Government has not taken a decision on a number of suggestions the regulator had made earlier including allocating Wi-Max spectrum for wireless broadband services and making National Internet Exchange of India more effective.“Only 0.47 million broadband subscribers have been added in first six months of 2007, which is far below the growth trend required to achieve broadband policy targets. This necessitated an analysis of regulatory & policy frameworks and to formulate new approach necessary for rapid rollout of broadband in the country,” the TRAI said.At the end of March 2007, there are 40.57 million Internet users and just 2.34 million broadband subscribers. “Therefore the growth of Internet subscribers is satisfactory but we are seriously lagging behind on broadband front. The targets fixed for the Broadband Policy are unlikely to be achieved. There are critical issues inhibiting broadband expansion in urban as well as rural areas. They need to be addressed urgently to facilitate expansion of broadband services,” TRAI said.TRAI has suggested that Government should increase the target fixed for BSNL and MTNL for provision of broadband connections in 2007-08. “The Government should ensure availability of more number of Ku band transponders to roll out broadband services through DTH platform and utilise Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund to provide subsidy for providing broadband services through satellite in remote and hilly areas,” TRAI said. Hope All ISPs Offer New better plans 😗

Hope All ISPs Offer New better plans 😗

Unfortunately, TRAI's narrowminded efforts are for increasing susbcriber numbers, not the quality/affordability of broadband.

^More number of subscribers==more competition==better quality.Remember cellphones?

Spreading awareness of the existence of broadband in our country will boost everything. Also if possible, convincing/justifying the necessity for having any net connection other than for just email/chatting would create demand. Every year about 5 lakhs students join engineering courses but only a very small percent of them go for net connection. This indicates our wisdom

@amogh: yes, better quality thanks to the competition but it will be slowww. TRAI only wants to force/mandate subscriber numbers to go up. if TRAI itself would work toward forcing/mandating better quality, things would improve much quicker...

Yes. Remember days when even we used to pay for incoming calls on cellNow Due to HUGE competition we have lots of outgoing minutes free too & with SMS offers..Same Should come to Broadband now..Abroad People used to have 1 Mbps connection.. now they have reached to 20 Mbps home connection..Indian ISPs are still looting people with so called Fruadband

TRAI and govt. Go on a vacation for a while. Use H.G. Wells' time machine if you want. Things will be so better when that happens.

americans pay for incoming calls and sms. we have discussed it 100000s of times. the market situation is different in every country.

On mobile phones they do, but for Landlines local(area code) incoming and outgoing is free, you just have to pay a fixed monthly charge. So it is indeed different country to country.

TRAI and govt. Go on a vacation for a while. Use H.G. Wells' time machine if you want. Things will be so better when that happens.

TRAI got the competition heated up and thats lead to us having the cheapest telephone services any where in the world.
They have been pushing for greater powers and better deals for the customers in the past.
Sadly things are a little different now

D Maran,the ex GOVT minister was the guy who gave us 2MBPS to all MTNL/BSNL BB users.That became a prime reason why private players came up with better plans.3 years ago almost everyone on this forum was on dial up.
Sadly again things are a little different now

I agree things can be better..............In the past few years we have got used to so much more that YEH DIL MANGE MORE & MORE!!

But without TRAI and a sensible Govt things can only get worse

Unfortunately, TRAI's narrowminded efforts are for increasing susbcriber numbers, not the quality/affordability of broadband.

Once the numbers increase,obviously there will be a bigger market and more people will start to put up shop seeing the potential.
Once more operators come in,competition causes prices to fall and quality to increase.
Its us who will benifit...................TRAI can only be a catalyst and create the necessary conditions that will lead to a change for the better.
TRAI is not MTNL or BSNL and it cant offer the services itself

:yahoo:

New Delhi, Sept. 17 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday urged the Government to take urgent policy measures to boost broadband growth in the country including asking BSNL and MTNL to adopt a franchisee model whereby local players can use their copper lines to offer high speed Internet services.
Once the Last mile connectivity is shared...............even MTNL will provide instandt Triband connections(forget about the 6 month waiting period that noobies recently faced)
Coz if they dont,local players will plug the demand and MTNL will get unplugged.
The problem is Private players cant afford to lay copper,only a Govt behemoth can afford that kind of infrastructure
Private guys want to push wireless,but they dont ahve any spectrum coz defense services continue to hog it

3 years ago? I am still on dial up (much faster than the VSNL-BSNL crap I used to have, though).

TRAI got the competition heated up and thats lead to us having the cheapest telephone services any where in the world.
The govt. basically allowed an oligopoly to come into place when it limited the number of players in each circle. That is why people were paying 16 rupees a minute. It is only after Mukesh Ambani came in that things started moving.

The TRAI is near-useless as far as consumers are concerned. Couldn't even settle the Tata-Sky Sun dispute. They had to go to TDSAT. If they hadn't reached a compromise, it would be another two years before we had a sunrise. A catalyst is only required if a thing can't burn on its own. If the government pours water when a thing ignites, what is the point of even having a catalyst?

But without TRAI and a sensible Govt things can only get worse
TRAI, I might (I stress might) be able to live with. But a sensible government is an oxymoron. Have never seen one and have no hopes of seeing one.

Unbundling of the last mile won't turn crooks into hermits overnight (Valmiki was a once-in-a-lifetime incident). Tata, Reliance, Sify or the others are not suddenly going to be customer friendly. They have no idea of what customer is. I have a theory which goes like this - any organization with over 100 employees automatically starts behaving like a government department - and nothing that I have experienced has made me change my view.

I agree with you about the defense services coz we in Pune have faced similar problems over the setting up of an international airport for more than 15 years now. Even the existing domestic airport is tightly controlled by them. Maybe they should thing of shifting the Southern Command to a sparsely populated area instead of situating it bang in the middle of a growing city.

Unrestricted competition with zero entry barriers is the only way things can be good. Companies will provide good service only when they are frightened-to-death of mass customer migration to a competitor.

TRAI and TDSAT have two different functions and hence one cant do the job of the other,
First is a regulator and I love TRAI coz they passed rules like
[*] no change in tariffs for the first 6 months,
[*] favourable rulings that prevented operators from misusing the lifetime offers
[*] pushing for abolition of ADC,,,,,,,,etc
[/list]TDSAT is after all a tribunal and tribunals simply function to resolve disputes.Obviously TRAI as a regulator cant do what a Tribunal can.

In the Sun Vs Tata Sky dispute that could have gone on for 2 years.....as we speak both Sun and Tata are broadcasting,may the better win !!


In the case of hermits vs cheats, all I can say is that competetion always WORKS !!!
Reliance and Tata force customers to buy their handsets(mostly),Sell one tariffa nd then change to something that suits them...........etc
But the Competition ensured that GSM who did not enjoy the CDMA monopoly have also got great competitive offers to the CDMA guys.

In the end if the 4 players/circle is not mandatory,I can envision 2 things ahead

[*] Free for all and dog eat dog pricing,that will kill many operators and those that survive will be a monopoly.No competetion and forget the cheap rates that we now have
[*] Even better things that what we now have,But I doubt the economics..........In the US dont they have free for all Telecom sector and arent their rates highers than our CURRENT rates?Coz only the Big Corporations survive in the end?
[/list] Good times ahead:thumbsup:

What I meant was TRAI couldn't enforce its must-provide rules which caused the dispute to move to TDSAT.Finally, we can only hope for something good happening, whoever makes it happen.

As long as TRAI is on the customers side and makes rules(which may not be enforcable) I am still happy.I always tell everyone that rules are meant to be broken 🙂let the Multi Billion corporations break each others necks and slug it out in court trying to kill each others business.I wanna be the monkey that eats the bread while the 2 cats Fight :rofl:besides now everyday people file PILS in the supreme court and the courts are actually coming out with juddements that are on the customers side.If it were not for the TRAI rules what would our fights as customers be based on.Till date Red tape and Beuracracy made life hell for people.Let it make life now hell for corporations.I'm tired of hell..................Gimme some heaven

I agree with you about the defense services coz we in Pune have faced similar problems over the setting up of an international airport for more than 15 years now. Even the existing domestic airport is tightly controlled by them. Maybe they should thing of shifting the Southern Command to a sparsely populated area instead of situating it bang in the middle of a growing city.


i believe they (defence ppl) came first there...and the population started settling around them...so why should they move their base???