DoT answers Trai call: 30% cut in bandwidth costs soon

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New Delhi, July 23: International bandwidth costs of BPOs, IT companies and telcos could go down 30-40%. The department of telecommunications (DoT) has accepted the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to open up landing stations of international long distance players for rival companies’ submarine cables, besides regulating cost-based access charges for such cables.

DoT and Trai had a meeting on the issue last week and orders are expected shortly, sources said. The move will lead to greater competition in the international private leased circuit (IPLC) segment.

New entrants are unable to provide competition in the IPLC market because operators deny access to competing operators either by asking for exorbitant rates or disallowing interconnection.

Currently, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Reliance Communications, Bharti and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd carry bandwidth to India through seven locations. Trai had recommended to the DoT to allow equal access at the cable landing stations (CLS), including landing facilities for submarine cables, to licensed operators on a non-discriminatory basis, without any sunset clause.

Trai had told DoT that bandwidth prices in India were high because of denial of access to the existing international capacity of submarine cables and denial of landing facilities for new consortia or privately held cables.

It said that regulators in many countries had removed such bottlenecks by mandating the non-discriminatory, fair and open access at the cable landing stations in their countries.

Two privately owned cables in Hong Kong and three in Singapore were permitted to land at cable landing stations whose owners previously did not allow such cable systems, after bringing about a new regulation.