This is an excellent write up on Business Standard (and luckily on Rediff). I reiterate all over again that Business Standard must improve it’s layout and content archival system. This does not befit a premium newspaper at all.
I quote selectively (emphasis mine):
Despite the free licence, less than half of India’s 338 ISPs have survived. Other ISPs have moved to niche markets. And some, according to TRAI and DoT, are untraceable. Government companies BSNL and MTNL control over 64 per cent of the market.
Unbundling the local loop and open and free entry for anyone to serve any size of area or population are considered sufficient conditions by regulators worldwide to seed booming Internet markets. WHAT THE F*** IS TRAI DOING?
Barring some early efforts, TRAI has been a helpless witness to the growing dominance of the Internet market by state incumbents. Access to network elements on cost-based charges is mandated in most successful Internet markets.
Internet telephony can be a boon for rural areas where most calls – with family members away to make a living in the city – are long-distance. TRAI wants all ISPs to be allowed to provide Internet telephony but in a restricted form – in which PCs may not call landline or mobile phones. This makes ISPs uncompetitive with the big telecom players. TRAI, however, proposes that telcos and ISPs pay the same annual fees to the government. (I had mentioned the same thing in my earlier write up here)
Rather than correct the failure of markets, the intention seems to be to shrink them so that bureaucrats have less work monitoring them. (No wonder. Government of India staffs morons of all hues).
Poor access to Internet and broadband is a sufficiently strong justification to amend the licence for cellular and unified access services to remove features, if any that cripple Internet and broadband growth.
The law empowers TRAI to recommend changes on grounds of public interest and advances in technology. The government and TRAI must wait no longer. (Public Interest? That is not foremost on their minds either!)
Comments welcome. But surely, this is indeed a dismal scenario.
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Could this "fee" being imposed, be, to make up for the shortfall in funds since they want to move to 74% FDI only, to make up the remaining 26% ??
It's very strange, what TRAI has recommended, almost like someone from BSNL/MTNL put a gun to their heads and said...
Now sing!
:O
Why doesn't TRAI have to explain their actions ?
Freedom of information etc.
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