TRAI's IFC recommendations to benefit travellers, lead to more revenue: BIF

Broadband India Forum (BIF) on Sunday said that telecom regulator TRAI's recommendation on in-flight connectivity (IFC) in Indian airspace will benefit travellers and lead to additional revenue generation for service providers.

"BIF supports the recommendations completely and believes that this will largely benefit the air travellers over India... lead to additional revenues for the service providers and the government besides bringing about socio-economic benefits to all," T.V. Ramachandran, President, BIF was quoted in a statement as saying.

"Inflight connectivity and access to the Internet is available today in many parts of the world. We are somewhat behind other countries."

Ramachandran urged the DOT (Department of Telecommunications) for "an early acceptance and implementation of these recommendations in co-ordination with MoCA (Ministry of Civil Aviation)".

On January 19 TRAI recommended that phone calls can be made or received and Internet services can be accessed beyond 3,000 metres. The height restriction is placed to avoided accessing the terrestrial mobile networks.

Further, TRAI said to promote the adoption of in-flight connectivity, IFC service providers should be allowed to be set up at a flat annual token licence fee of Re 1.

In addition, the framework recommended for IFC services in Indian airspace should be made applicable to all types of aircraft such as commercial airlines, business jets and executive aircraft.

--IANS

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