Computers Today, November 1-15, 2000; Telecom

T.H. Chowdary It is very curious that while the Prime Minister and the Communications Minister are committed to rapid and total liberalisation and demonopolisation of Indian telecommunications, the implementing agency, the DOT, and even the newly-reconstituted TRAI are unable to get over their permit-licence-quota and anti-private company mentality. Also, within the DOT the decades-old tendency to obtain obsolete equipment even while the latest technologies are available is not dying. I will cite a few examples, where because of the seriousness of the actions, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandra Babu Naidu wrote to the Prime Minister drawing the latter's attention to the inappropriate actions of the DOT.

First is with regard to the DOT's renewed attempt to procure first generation, narrow-band CDM, wireless local loop (WLL) equipment for deployment in rural areas for 600,000 lines at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore. According to DOT specification, the data speed of the equipment is 9.6 Kbps. At a time when we are wanting to take the Net to villages, can we have such a low-speed wireless access and that too when the dial-up access is costing about Rs 25 an hour, while the Internet usage price itself is about Rs 8 per hour? Secondly, the cost per line of the proposed equipment is going to be about Rs 70,000 and thirdly, this equipment would have to be imported.

The Indigenous Option

We have an excellent alternative-the indigenously-developed corDECT-a WLL access equipment already tried out by the DOT (in Kuppam Mandal of Andhra Pradesh) where it is used both for public telephones and Internet connections. This equipment provides 36 Kbps speed plus a voice channel or 72 Kbps for data transmission alone. Its costs less than one-fourth the estimated price of the CDM equipment intended to be purchased. Is it not tragic that while the National Telecom Policy says that India should become a base for the production of telecom equipment for global markets, the DOT does not patronise indigenous equipment which is superior to and cheaper than the imported ones? The equipment chosen by the DOT is the first generation one and has no migration path to the broadband CDM and other systems (2.5G and 3G), which have speeds from 284 Kbps to 2 Mbps.

Naidu has also advocated for entry of unlimited number of private basic telephone companies. He has sought that arbitrary external costs like high entry fees and large revenue shares should be done away with. The idea is to make telecom services as inexpensive as warranted by technologies and facilitated by competition.

Doing Away with Licence Raj

The Government's Internet service policy is the benchmark for liberalisation and non-intervention by the regulator because of the unlimited number of licenses given. The wisdom of the policy is borne out by the fact that within 18 months of the policy, the number of Internet subscribers has increased five-fold and the price has come down to one-fifth. These figures could have been even more impressive had the DOT and the VSNL respected the Government's spirit of full liberalisation. Although the policy permits private ISPs to put up their own gateways and obtain bandwidth from any satellite and/or submarine cable, the serially invented and imposed conditions have, in practice, disabled ISPs from putting up any international gateway so far.

Unless licensing functions are removed from the DOT and the regulatory body is filled with liberalisers and unless it is rid of promoters of monopoly and permit-license-quota raj, we would suffer for want of inexpensive and extensive telecom infrastructure, a sine qua non for India to become an IT and software super power.

The writer is ex-chairman of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd

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