Trai wants spectrum subsidy for rural areas

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Chairman Pradip Baijal today said the government should provide spectrum free of cost or subsidise it through the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund to take broadband to the rural areas.

"There is no demand for spectrum in the rural areas. The rural areas may be deprived of the broadband benefits unless the government takes steps to offer the service there," he said at the broadband summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries .

He said the national connectivity backbone infrastructure is there with 6.7 lakh route kilometres of optical fibre already been deployed across the country and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd had reached 30,000 of its 35,000 exchanges with fibre and added that there was a spossible capacity of upto 20 Gbps to each of these 30,000 locations.

"Fibre is there. Bandwidth is there. But the fibre end is needed to be priced intelligently," he said.

He also said that the current broad band price of $15 per 100 kilobits per second was too high for the price-sensitive Indian consumer. He said that broadband penetration would have far reaching effects on development, governance and international competitiveness.

"It will ensure at least 1.8 million direct employments, 62 million indirect employments by 2020 and will lead 11 per cent increase in labour productivity growth," Baijal said.

Sam Pitroda, Chairman of C-Sam Inc, and member of national advisory Council of the United Progressive alliance government called for empowerment of rural India to make it the back office of urban India so that real meaningful jobs would be created in rural areas.

He also called for development of new application and looking at broadband more creatively. "Broadband is not all about video streaming and games, but features like e-governance, e-health, e-learning and e-newjobs are to be looked at when we think about broadband," Pitroda said.

Pitroda also stressed on the unbundling of local loop for broadband penetration. He said the Trai would play a pivotal role in mapping India's broadband future.