To achieve greater penetration in broadband connections across the country, mainly in rural areas, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has suggested the Government to bring down the levies on computers and mobile phones. In a consultation paper on delivering broadband quickly, the regulator points out that the lowest configuration computer costs about Rs 10,000 and additional taxes makes it difficult for rural households that take the access devices further out of reach of the common man.
According to the regulator, mobile subscribers are being plagued by low-speed internet connectivity and broadband growth in the country has been very dismal. Spectrum allocation is also a bone of contention for de-growth of broadband. However, TRAI is likely to come out with recommendations on spectrum pricing for the next round of auction held by mobile operators - Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and RCom - as some of their licences are set to expire in 2015-16.
The Centre is also planning to create a policy framework for broadband services providers, permitting them to get into franchisee agreements with cable TV service providers in rural areas. The reason behind the move is cable TV's greater penetration. According to Government data, there are 60.68 million broadband users in India. Of these, 14.86 million are on wire-line services and the remaining 40.01 million are on wireless cellular networks.
To encourage speedy proliferation of broadband, the TRAI has also suggested provision of affordable and reliable broadband-on-demand by the year 2015. It has also asked the Government to achieve 175 million broadband connections by the year 2017 and 600 million by the year 2020 at minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand.
Against a target of achieving 175 million broadband connections by 2017, only 60.87 million have been achieved.However, the top ten service providers account for about 97% of subscriber base and the top 5 service providers alone hold 83% market share. State owned companies viz. BSNl and MTNl together have about 74.9% market share for wireline broadband and 30.5% for overall broadband subscriptions. This suggests that despite having a license for providing broadband services, the majority of the service providers are either unwilling or unable to penetrate into the market and the market is still dominated by a few players only.