Industry body ISPAI Sunday said that rates of Internet and broadband
services may go up under new licenses framework due to high entry fee
proposed by Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
DoT has proposed
to charge one-time entry of Rs. 15 crore for a national level Unified
Licence compared to Rs. 30 lakh which companies pay for Internet services
at present.
"DoT has not done anything new as per the proposed
format for Unified Licence regime. They are going ahead with option to
continue the old licence format along with a new national level Unified
Licence (UL) that will cost Rs. 15 crore.
"If Internet service
providers opt for UL, then cost of Internet and broadband services will
go up," Internet Service Provider Association of India's (ISPAI)
President Rajesh Charia told PTI.
In the new licencing regime, DoT
should allow Internet telephony which would lead to low cost call
service that would benefit even rural area the country where illiteracy
is very high.
"VoIP is widely accepted application. Foreign
companies who are not registered with DoT are providing voice calling
service both between Computer to Computer and Computer to landlines.
"They
don't even have licences. We pay annual charges to DoT and should be
allowed to provide voice services across networks," he said.
A DoT
internal committee has recommended to allow ISPs with wireless
broadband spectrum (BWA) to provide voice telephony service using these
airwaves. In 2010, six private players including Reliance Jio Infocom,
formerly Infotel Broadband, Tikona Digital and Augere had won BWA
spectrum.
The committee has left it for higher authorities to
decide if players who won BWA spectrum in 2010 should be asked to make
additional payment of Rs. 1,658 crore which was charged from telecom
players till 2008 for providing mobile telephony.
The licence
issued to mobile telephony operators for Rs. 1,658 crore had 4.4 Mhz
spectrum bundled with it but government has announced to provide no
spectrum with UL.