New Delhi, April 29: If the telecom regulator has its way, Indian households will start dumping their crawling dial-up internet connection for high-speed broadband connections within the next couple of months.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today recommended that the always-on broadband connection should be offered at a price of Rs 200-400 per month against Rs 1,500 per month — making it the cheapest and fastest way to surf the net. It will be as simple as switching on a television.

Trai reckons there will be 20 million broadband users by 2007 if the government and broadband service providers accept the recommendations.

Trai recommended to the government a series of measures to ramp up broadband connections that will determine the growth of e-governance, e-health, and e-education.

“Broadband connectivity is an always-on data connection with the minimum capability of 256 kilobits per second,” Trai said. The regulator admitted that the definition of broadband would change over time as applications and bandwidth requirements evolve.

To increase the growth of broadband in India, Trai has recommended that the incumbent operator (Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam) and those private operators whose networks are more than five years old should submit a road map of the usage of their networks for broadband.

Once the recommendations are accepted by the government, they will have to inform Trai within three weeks giving details of exchanges that would be used by them to provide broadband on their own and those exchanges which they are willing to share with other operators.

Broadband-over-cable TV is a common phenomenon in the US where it accounts for more than 74 per cent of the total internet connections. In Canada, it is 55 per cent. However, in India, the cable operators will have to take the initiative and adopt new business models to compete in a converged environment.

Broadband on TV will permit new services such as pay-per-view, video on demand and generate extra revenues. The regulator said the operators need training to create awareness about the utility of their networks and understanding of the investments required, returns possible and technical aspects.

The other recommendations on broadband include allowing internet service providers to offer direct-to-home facility along with internet service without any entry fee.

Other services include the offer of an open sky policy for very small aperture terminal (V-sat service providers), removal of minimum dish size and throughput restrictions, and the offer of internet services to multiple customers. In addition, they will be allowed to set up the V-sat networks if the clearance is not given within a month.

Trai has also recommended a few fiscal concessions like reduction in wireless planning commission charges to 1 per cent of annual gross receipts (AGR) and exemption of DTH from spectrum royalty fees when up-linking from within India.

It also seeks to allow 100 per cent depreciation in first year for PCs and broadband capital expenditure, tax benefits for PCs that are donated to specific organisations and remove anti-dumping duty for recycled PCs imported into India.

It has also suggested duty reduction on inputs and finished products to mobile phone levels, waiver of income tax at least up to 50 per cent to web hosting services for a period of five years, and a five-year tax holiday for ISPs, waiver of sales tax on e-commerce transaction for five years and no entertainment tax on broadband subscriptions and services. In order to allow use of latest technologies for broadband, Trai has suggested vacating a few spectrum bands and developing a pricing incentives for usage. It has suggested active grant of right of way permission and use of Global Information Service to set up networks.

New post

While the government and political parties are pruning down the size of the government machinery, Trai has suggested the creation of a new secretary level post to widen broadband use.