Trai proposes to cut broadband charges for public wifi service providers

Telecom regulator Trai on Friday proposed to bring down broadband connection charges for public data offices, which provide public wifi services, at par with retail users, as the number of public wifi spots in the country is far below the target number envisaged by the government.

In the explanatory note of draft Telecommunication Tariff (Seventh Amendment) Order, 2024, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) found that the annual tariff of a 100 mbps of internet leased line tariff are 40-80 times more than 100 mbps of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband connection for retail users.

Trai said it is of the view that public data offices (PDOs), specifically the small-scale units like local shops, retailers, generally have low revenue potential and they neither need an ILL connection nor they can afford high backhaul rates which are applicable for large commercial entities.

"The authority proposes that for the purpose of providing PM-WANI (Wi-Fi Access Network Interface) scheme, PDOs may be charged tariff rate at par with the tariffs for retail broadband (FTTH) connections, for the capacities for which the said retail tariff is being offered to subscribers by the service providers," Trai said.

The proposal will be reviewed after two years of its implementation, the draft said.

The National Digital Communications Policy, 2018 under 'Connect India' mission had set the goal to enable deployment of 5 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by December 2025 for creating a robust digital communication infrastructure.

The Department of Telecom had in November 2022 shared with Trai that the proliferation of public wifi hotspots is quite limited and much below the targets.

The DoT had cited that one of the reasons for low proliferation of PM-Wani is the extremely high cost of backhaul internet connectivity charged by telecom operators and internet service providers from PDOs.

As on July 22, 2024, there were over 2.07 lakh deployed PM-Wani Wi-Fi hotspots in the country and 199 PDO aggregators and 111 app providers.