Policy not enough on the local loop front

While the industry has welcomed the broadband policy ann-ounced by Union
Minister for Communications and IT Daya-nidhi Maran, experts feel that the
government has not done enough on the local loop front.

Interestingly, however, ins-tead of unbundling the copper loop, the policy
has permitted access providers to enter into mutually agreed commercial
arrangements for utilization of available copper loop for exp-ansion of
broadband services.

Recognising that last mile copper loop is not a 'bottle-neck facility'
for broadband services and access providers shall be free to enter into mutually
agreed commercial arrangements for utilization of available copper loop for
expansion of broadband services.

According to the policy document, the owner of local loop shall, however, be
free to decide the areas in which investment is to be made to upgrade the
infrastructure for Broadband services. The policy also directs Bharat Sanchar
Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) as well as
other access providers to aggressi-vely use their copper loop infrastructure for
providing Broadband services through this technology.

The only other significant decision taken as part of the new policy is to
permit use of Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) on the 2.4 GHz band in outdoor locations
against the present regime of restricting it to a closed area. The move will
ena-ble consumers to access the Internet even while they are traveling in a car
or train simi-lar to what they can do with mobile phones.

Welcoming the broadband policy announced by the gove-rnment, TV Ramachandran,
Director general, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said that this
policy is likely to trigger a growth in the WiFi usage within the country.

On the unbundling of local loop he said, "There is a lot of
infrastructure sharing that has already started happening between BSNL and other
ope-rators. So there are a lot of syn-ergies that they share. This whole issue
of unbundling of local loop is quite complicated and the government has taken
the right decision," Rama-chandran said.

Echoing same overtones, ISPAI has welcomed the Broadband Policy as well.
According to its secretary Deepak Maheshwari, the reco-gnition of broadband as
the basic infrastructure would give much needed impetus to e-governance,
distance learning and tele-medicine while taking care of urban congestion and,
job creation for the world's largest young population segment.

Meanwhile in a press state-ment, MAIT Executive Director Vinnie Mehta said,
"Broadband will usher in a whole new set of services including gaming,
entertainment, education and other interactive public utility services, which
will give further impetus to PC consumption. Further, this would throw open a
vast opportunity for the IT and electronics manufacturers as deployment of
various 'boxes' to create infrastructure for delivery of broad band services
would be needed."

"Delicensing of 2.4-2.8 GHz frequency for outdoor usage; 802.11b and
802.11g for indoor usage and the proposed delicensing of frequencies in the 5
GHz band for both indoor and outdoor are extremely positive steps and will fuel
the growth of mobility products by enabling convenience of acc-ess. Eventually
by the end of year 2010, the policy aims to target 20 million broadband
subscribers and 40 million Internet subscribers.

Zia Askari (CyberMedia News)