Telecom regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today initiated the process of opening up cable landing stations for all the international long distance (ILD) operators. The regulator today issued a draft regulation mandating non-discriminatory, fair and open access cable landing station for consultation. Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) is a major player in this segment and owns over 80 per cent of the capacity.

Once the regulation is finalised, prices of international band width may fall as opening up of landing stations will lead to more competition in this segment. Presently, ILD operators have to approach the existing players — VSNL and Bharti — for cable landing stations. They have to sign agreements with them under their terms and conditions. The new regulations will help new players in easy roll out of networks. The proposed regulation would induce strong competition in the sector, which would lead to reduction in the price of international private leased circuits. It would also provide international bandwidth at competitive price to the ISPs for rapid growth of broadband services besides giving an opportunity to ILD operators to install their own submarine cables, said Trai.

The operators, who have acquired capacity in a submarine cable system from foreign carriers or International Telecom carriers, are facing problems while accessing such capacity at the cable landing station of an existing operator, said the regulator.

A number of submarine cables are landing or terminating in India at cable landing stations operated and managed by few ILD operators and access to these stations by other licensees is necessary for creating a conducive environment. In December, 2005, Trai had made recommendations to the Department of Telecom on ‘Measures to Promote Competition in International Private Leased Circuits in India’, which was accepted by the department. The government also amended the relevant clauses in ILD service license to ensure efficient, transparent and non-discriminatory access facilities for submarine cables at cable landing stations. The telecom regulator said that there was a need for standard/published access facilitation agreement, which can be used by new service providers to avail international submarine cable facility. In the absence of such a proposed regulation, there is a scope for delay in the provisioning of access to the capacity acquired by the competing operators from ILDOs who own the landing stations, said the regulator.