New Delhi: Seems like the consumers’ life in India is going to become hell with the price hike in essential commodities. After fuel and LPG, the rates of Internet and broadband services are likely to go up under new licenses framework. The move will put an additional burden on the Internet users.
The Internet Service Providers Associations of India (ISPAI) said that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has proposed to charge one-time of Rs 15 crore for a national level Unified Licence (UL).
The ISPAI is batting for DoT proposal saying the old licence format will be continued along with a new national level UL, which will cost Rs 15 crore.
If the Internet service providers will go ahead with UL, the rates of Internet and broadband services will be hiked. However, people in rural area are likely to get more benefits if the DoT will implement Internet telephony that would lead to low cost call service.
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Since VoIP is widely accepted application, the foreign companies are taking the advantage providing voice call services (both Computer to Computer and Computer to landlines) even though they do not posses licenses. ISPAI demanded to be allowed to provide voice call services as the association is paying annual charges to DoT.
Meanwhile, the ISPAI has been allowed to provide voice telephony service after the recommendation of the DoT internal committee.
Earlier, six private firms including Reliance Jio Infocom, formerly Infotel Broadband, Tikona Digital and Augere had won BWA spectrum to provide the broadband services in 2010.
However, the higher authorities will decide whether the firms which won BWA spectrum in 2010 would pay more of 1,658 crore for providing mobile telephony till 2008.