NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday allowed operators offering global services such as Bharti, BSNL and VSNL access to submarine cable landing stations, a move that can lower international bandwidth tariffs.

The `International Telecommunication Access to Essential Facilities at Cable Landing Stations Regulations, 2007,' will provide international bandwidth connectivity at cable landing stations to ILD (international long distance) operators and Internet service providers "in a fair and transparent manner,'' TRAI said in a statement.

Boosting competition

The access to cable landing stations (CLS) by other licensees is necessary for creating a conducive environment and boosting competition in the international bandwidth connectivity and the leased circuits segment, TRAI said. CLS is critical for providing telecom facilities and it needs to be ensured that any restriction on such facilities should not become a `bottleneck' to the international telecom services provision. TRAI said the regulation would induce strong competition in the sector and this would lead to reduction in the price of international private leased circuits.

It would also provide bandwidth at competitive price to Internet service providers for growth of broadband services, besides giving an opportunity to international long distance operators (ILDOs) to install their own submarine cables.

There should not be any restriction on CLS, which is essential for telecom facilities, the regulator said.

Operators, who have acquired capacity in a submarine cable system from foreign carriers or international telecom carriers, were facing problems while accessing such capacity at the cable landing station of an existing operator, the regulator said.

A number of submarine cables were landing or terminating in India at landing stations operated and managed by few ILDOs and access to these stations by other licensees was necessary for creating a conducive environment.

TRAI said there was a need for standard and published access facilitation agreement, which can be used by new operators to avail themselves of the international submarine cable facility. In the absence of such a proposed regulation, there is scope for delay in the provisioning of access to the capacity acquired by the competing operators from ILDOs, who own the landing stations, the regulator said.

The owners of cable landing stations are mandated to submit `Cable Landing Station — Reference Interconnect Offer,' containing the terms and conditions of access facilitation and co-location facilities, within 30 days for the approval of the authority, it said. — PTI

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