Trai broadband suggestions soon

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will table its recommendations on broadband connectivity in the next one month. The regulations on conditional access system (CAS) will follow in the two to three months.

Pradip Baijal, chairman, Trai told the media here that the penetration level of broadband connections has been dismal. Only two out 10,000 people have broadband connectivity. "This does not speak well for a country riding high on its information business," he scoffed.

"Broadband connectivity is as high as 1.2 per 100 persons in China and Malaysia and 57 per 100 persons in Korea," he said and added that 42 million telephones in the country can easily be upgraded to broadband connections.

While Trai is still in the process of understanding the cable industry business which, Baijal estimated the industry's subscription earnings to be about Rs 9,000 crore.

"As the industry is largely in the unroganised sector, it is difficult to decipher its earning from advertisements. It could be anywhere between Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 10,000 crore," he said.

"There is an urgency to usher in the broadbrand and direct-to-home (DTH) era to fight the monopoly cable operators," he explained.

Buoyant about the mobile industry, Baijal said that the Indian mobile market is poised to grow to 100 million users by December 2005. "In terms of market size for mobile telephony, India will be number three in the world in another three years," he predicted.

"That the market which took eight years to grow to 10 million users, jumped up to 30 million in one year, shows that this is a market for low tariffs," he pointed out.

The ratio of per capita mobile usage between the China and India was a dismal 15:1 in 2002. It has now improved now 6:1. With the exponential growth, the ratio will be 3:1 in two years' time, Baijal added.