Internet Policy Gets Off The Block

The Union cabinet cleared the much-awaited Internet policy yesterday. The policy which was cleared by the committee of secretaries over two months ago could not be cleared by the government until now because it could not be tabled before the cabinet due to other pressing issues, top government sources said.

The clearance will now herald the entry of private Internet service providers. The department of telecommunications (DoT), which in tandem with the department of electronics (DoE) drafted the policy, will now prepare guidelines for ISPs and licence them. The Internet policy has suggested a yearly licence fee of Rs 31 lakh per ISP for right to operate services all over the country. The levy will be reviewed after two years. The policy does not prescribe a ceiling on the number of ISPs in the country. Also, ISPs will be allowed international connectivity only through gateways of VSNL, currently the only ISP in the country.

The electronic mail services of companies like Global Net, Dart Mail, Sprint RPG, Bharti BT, Datapro and Icnet have not taken off because they are not allowed to offer subscribers access to the Net.