In order to boost availability of broadband services, telecom regulator TRAI today sought views from the public on ways to accelerate proliferation and use of high speed internet services in the country.
“The objective…is to discuss issues contributing to the poor broadband penetration in India and solicit stakeholders’ views on actions required to be taken both by the Government and the service providers to accelerate the proliferation and use of broadband in the country,” TRAI said in a consultation paper.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has also invited views on timeline to auction 700 megahertz band, most premium spectrum available for telecom services.
In the consultation paper, the regulator has sought views on the way cost of deploying various broadband technologies can be reduced, measures required to encourage content service providers to host content in the data center situated within India,issues in laying optical fibre, freeing spectrum bands for Wi-Fi technology etc. The paper has been floated to meet objectives of National Telecom Policy 2012.
The policy has set a target to “provide affordable and reliable broadband-on-demand by the year 2015 and to achieve 175 million broadband connections by the year 2017 and 600 million by the year 2020 at minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand”. Against a target of achieving 175 million broadband connections by 2017, 60.87 million have been achieved while total internet connections in the country now stands at about 252 million.