Broadband India

Open Access to International Fibre Stations

Some Indian carriers like VSNL [Tata Indicom], Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel have private International Fibre Networks or are in alliance with other Telcos from around the world who have landing stations in India. The right to operate these stations rested solely with these companies. However, TRAI just a while ago issued a directive to open and share access to these stations to other Telcos in India to encourage competition and fair pricing on ILD routes. TRAI recommendations are as follows,

• Provisioning of bandwidth to end consumers at competitive rates
• Boosting of competition and therefore reduction in the price of international private leased circuits (IPLCs)
• Availability of International bandwidth at competitive price to ISPs for rapid growth of Broadband Service
• Options to ILDs to purchase International bandwidth at competitive prices on a range of diversified submarine cables
• Carriage of voice/data at a competitive cost.