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Broadband Backfire

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DQI Bureau
New Update

According to news reports, the Union Communications and IT Ministry has

scaled down its target for broadband subscribers from 3 mn to 1 mn, by the end

of December this year. Though the DoT has neither confirmed nor denied the

reports, the fact remains that even with the current healthy rate of broadband

adoption, the number of subscribers are not expected to go beyond a million by

the yearend.

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According to sources in the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers

of India (AUSPI), the reason for the shortfall is the fact that despite adopting

the target as in TRAI's Broadband Policy recommendations, the DoT did not

adopt some key policy recommendations.

On the positive side, there has been a steep fall in broadband tariffs, down

to Rs 250 per month. The prices are expected to plummet further as demand

increases. Indian broadband rates are among the lowest in the world, with charge

per MB of download, as low as Re 1. However, the big bane in the achievement of

targets has been the government's reluctance to unbundle the last mile.

The DoT policy, which had come out a year back had stated, "if the

targets are missed, the government would consider unbundling." Of the

target of 30 lakh subscribers by December end, only 6.1 lakh subscribers have

been added by September end, of which 350,000 are subscribers of private

operators, while 260,000 are customers of MTNL and BSNL.

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According to Deepak Maheshwari, Secretary, ISPAI, "The growth of

broadband today is a lot faster than the rate of cell phone adoption. While the

momentum is big, the base is still too small and a lot more effort is required

to reach the targets. India can heed the example of Japan and UK, where under

similar circumstances, the local loop has been unbundled to increase IT

penetration."

While private players talk about Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) being the key

issue, the incumbents-BSNL and MTNL -say that the progress has been

inhibited because of the lack of content rich services such as IPTV,

video-on-demand, interactive messaging and gaming, issues, which are being

addressed.

Numbers

Game
Number

of broadband subscribers (in million)
  5-Mar 5-Jun 5-Sep Broadband

Policy Target
BSNL 0.03 0.07 0.17 1
MTNL 0.01 0.04 0.09 0.5
Others 0.15 0.29 0.35 1.5
Total 0.19 0.4 0.61 3

Jasmine Kaur

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