TRAI seeks stakeholder's comments on broadband

New Delhi, Sept 17: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today issued its draft recommendations on 'Growth of Broadband' to solicit the comments of stakeholders.

Based on the feedback of stakeholders, draft recommendations will be finalised and sent to the Government.

In 2004, the Government announced Broadband Policy and made certain projections for broadband subscribers' growth. It was expected that broadband growth would accelerate.

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 expected level.

Some of the salient features of TRAI's draft recommendations are that BSNL and MTNL should be encouraged to appoint franchisees for providing broadband services to supplement their efforts and any procedural restrictions/limitations needs to be addressed immediately, encouraging Indian manufacturers to produce more CPEs to provide broadband using DSL technology, spectrum for 3G and WiMAX should be made available at the earliest to boost the deployment of broadband using these technologies.

UNI