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In a significant development, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday has proposed that for the purpose of providing PM-WANI (Prime Minister WIFI Network Interface) scheme, public data offices (PDOs) should be charged a tariff rate at par with the tariffs for retail broadband (FTTH) connections.
TRAI released a draft Telecommunication Tariff (70th Amendment) Order, 2024 on “Regulatory framework for PM-WANI scheme”, and said it has analysed the issues and is of the view that it is necessary to rationalise the cost of broadband connectivity to PDOs to pace up the proliferation of PM-WANI scheme.
Based on the experience gained, the TRAI said it may review the proposed arrangement for PM-WANI scheme, after a period of two years.
The National Digital Communications Policy, 2018 under ‘Connect India’ mission had set the goal to enable deployment of 10-million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022 for creating a robust digital communication infrastructure.
Further, the Bharat 6G Vision also sets the goal of 10-million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022 and 50 million by 2030 for Digital India 2030 mobile and broadband policy objectives. However, PM-WANI hotspot numbers presently are much below the targeted numbers, as envisaged in NDCP, 2018 document and in Bharat 6G vision document.
In November 2022, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in its communication to TRAI stated that the proliferation of the PM-WANI scheme is quite limited and far below the targets due to extremely high cost of backhaul Internet connectivity charged by telecom service providers (TSPs) and Internet service providers (ISPs) from PDOs.
Further, DoT has opined that in the name of commercial agreements, TSPs/ISPs often insist on PDOs to connect public Wi-Fi access points using expensive Internet leased lines (ILL) instead of regular fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband connections.
Therefore, TRAI brought out this draft amendment order and has requested the stakeholders to send their written comments on the same by September 6 and counter comments, if any, by September 13.
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