The
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stuck to
its recommendation of allowing free data to consumers in a non-discriminatory
manner by third-party aggregators while agreeing with the telecom department’s
views that government money can be used for connectivity rather than supporting
free data scheme to rural subscribers.
The regulator
noted that data had become affordable due to a tariff war in the telecom
sector, and that “concern with regard to availability of affordable data
services has been mitigated.”
“The authority
tends to agree with the views of DoT (Department of Telecom) that a larger
focus is required on connectivity, content availability in local language and
digital literacy. The resources could therefore be effectively utilised to
address the said issues,” TRAI said responding to the telecom department’s
views on its free data recommendations.
In December last
year, Trai had recommended that a “reasonable” amount of free data access — say
a 100 MB per month — be provided to rural subscribers and the scheme could be
funded from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
However, the DoT
subsequently pointed out that cost of an Internet enabled mobile handset was a
bigger “obstacle” than the tariff of Internet access, and that the latter had
already been addressed to an extent through market competition.
DoT questioned
whether it would be worthwhile to provide a subsidy to those rural subscribers
who already owned smartphones. It opined that the applicability of the proposed
scheme was “limited”, thus undermining its tenability.
Source: THE HINDU-30th November,2017
