Govt may allow cable TV operators to double as broadband providers

04 Jul 2014

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The government is planning to introduce a new licence category that will enable DTH operators and cable TV service providers to improve penetration of broadband services in the country by acting as licensed franchisee networks, especially in semi-urban and rural areas.

To be called Cable TV Internet Service Providers licence, it will be part of the broadband policy being formulated by the telecom ministry.

The reason behind the move is the greater penetration of DTH and cable TV services who offer the much-needed connectivity to the rural hinterlands of the country.

Government data shows there are 60.68 million broadband users in India, of which 14.86 million are wire-line service (cable TV) users while 40.01 million are on wireless cellular networks.

On the other hand, about 100 million Indian households are connected through the cable television network while there were about 64 million DTH subscribers at the end of March 2014.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) expects the country to have 175 million broadband users by 2017, with the number jumping to 600 million by 2019 and a minimum download speed of 2 megabytes per second, instead of average 256 kilobytes per second now.

Besides creating infrastructure for affordable and reliable broadband, the DoT has also noted that higher speed broadband services, up to 100 megabytes per second, should be made available. As per the government's target, high speed broadband should be made available to all the 6.5 lakh villages across India by 2020.

The government is in the process of connecting 2.5 lakh villages across the country with optical fibre, under the Rs20,000-crore National Optical Fibre Network project. The DoT has also proposed to subsidise the broadband connections for low income and unconnected citizens.

DoT is looking at a suitable policy intervention that would help reach each household in a gram panchayat through both wireline and wireless broadband.

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