The authority has been working on broadband issues and hopefully we will come out with a paper on broadband may be by the end of next month, said Dr Khullar while inaugurating the 'Eighth Mobile India Summit: Broadband Highway-Driving India's Growth Story,' organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).
Conceding that India's progress in terms of broadband has been very limited, Dr Khullar said Very honestly our progress has been disappointing.
Dr Khullar also informed that TRAI will soon come out with a paper on microwave spectrum. We've already issued a paper on microwave access, hopefully by the end of the month you will see something on that too.
He further said that the Centre should immediately take a decision regarding deployment and auction of 700 megahertz (MHZ). We've already sent our recommendations on 700 MHZ as to how it should be deployed, I think very quickly the government needs to come to a decision that are we going to deploy it and when that 700 MHZ would be auctioned.
Talking about the need to augment the supply of spectrum available for commercial purposes, the TRAI chairman said that there must be some end to this standoff between one department of Government and another for not releasing the spectrum owing to security considerations. I think it is time for the Government, at least the DOT (Department of Telecommunications) to be far more aggressive on this than it has been hitherto.
He also stressed upon the need to reduce the load on telecom system so that it is used for higher data purposes. Why are we not delicensing more spectrum and in several bands and this is something we've already made recommendations on as far back as 2012 but unfortunately it did not make progress for various reasons.
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He also said that issues of ducts and ROW should be resolved for successful delivery of broadband.
Sharing certain numbers he said, Of 1.8 lakh kilometres (kms) cable that has been ordered 15,000 has been delivered which is just about 8 per cent, of six lakh kms for ducting actual achievement is about 2,000 kms which is about 0.3 per cent, the optical fibre cable pulled is about 250 kms which is less than 0.05 per cent of the target and all this has been achieved in past two years.
He thus stressed on the need for targeted approach to achieve broadband policy objectives.
Besides he also focussed upon the scope to use private infrastructure already existing in conjunction with already existing public infrastructure.
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