India To Review Internet Services Policy

The Indian government is not happy with the current state of internet services – for one, it’s losing a lot of revenues due to grey market operations, second, the broadband is not taking off. The government, therefore, has asked the telecom regulator TRAI to review the current internet services policy and come up with recommendations.
In the review, the department of telecom would address issues such as large number of ISP licenses, grey market operations, level playing field vis-a-vis other licensed telecom services and slow growth of broadband services, says a report in The Financial Express.
The govermnet noted that though 389 ISPs have so far been given licenses to operate Internet services, the 98 per cent of the subscribers belong to the top 20. Also, the internet telephony licence has been given to 128 ISPs, but only 32 provide the service. The government thinks something is amiss here. Also the broadband growth has been slow with its falling short of the target of 3 million by end-2006 by a huge margin.
TRAi will also look at the practice of corporates and BPOs using unauthorised internet tekephony services like Skype and Vonage.

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