Sheesh, regulators

Tue Sep 14 04:19:27 UTC 2004

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/09/11/stories/2004091102660400.htm

ISPs may be stopped from offering private leased line services

Thomas K. Thomas
New Delhi , Sept. 10

INTERNET Service Providers (ISPs) are in for a major setback with the 
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) proposing to restrict them 
from offering private leased line services.

While the telecom regulator is considering to ask the state-owned Bharat 
Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) to resume provision of leased line resources to 
ISPs, the latter may be allowed to use it only for providing 
Internet-based services.

This will come as a big blow to Internet operators who get a significant 
part of their revenue from corporate leased line services like virtual 
private network (VPN).

The fight between BSNL and ISPs over the issue has been hanging fire for 
the last few months. The high point came when BSNL stopped offering 
leased line services to ISPs on grounds that they were misusing the 
infrastructure to offer services that were beyond the scope of their 
licence.

BSNL had argued that ISPs, who do not pay any entry fee or licence fee, 
should not be allowed to offer corporate leased line service as it was 
infringing on the turf of long distance operators. Companies such as 
Sify, HCL Infinet and Tata Internet had made representation to the 
regulator against the stance taken by BSNL.

The telecom regulator has taken a position favouring BSNL by saying that 
the public sector company was justified in its demand, as ISPs were not 
eligible to provide services such as VPN.

This service is used by large corporates to network all their branch 
offices spread across the country.

However, a TRAI report on the issue said that BSNL was fair in demanding 
that ISPs can use the leased lines only for Internet purpose and not 
resell it, because they were not entitled to do the business of 
reselling bandwidth leased from other telecom service providers.

The telecom regulator has also sought the views of the Department of 
Telecom (DoT) on the issue and would give its final directive in the 
next few weeks. DoT officials said that the department was looking at 
allowing ISPs to offer VPN services but only after paying an entry fee 
to level the playing field with long distance players.