Ministry of Communications
TRAI releases Session Paper on ‘Licensing Framework and Regulatory Mechanism for Submarine Cable Touchdown in India’
Posted On:
23 DEC 2022 8:09PM by PIB Delhi
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has immediately issued the Session Paper on ‘Licensing Framework and Regulatory Mechanism for Submarine Cable Touchdown in India’.
Submarine cables are important communication infrastructure of the digital age and demanding to the immediately’s fast-paced information pushed financial system. The worldwide intensive community of submarine communication cables traverses the maritime zones of a number of nations connecting folks and companies throughout the globe. In keeping with information obtained from homeowners of Cable Touchdown Station, India has round seventeen submarine cables terminating at fourteen distinct cable touchdown stations. As well as, a lot of new submarine cables are in pipeline for rollout, which is able to make landfall at completely different coastal cities of India.
Division of Telecommunications (DoT) by its reference letter has approached TRAI, sharing its concern over some Indian Worldwide Lengthy Distance Operators (ILDOs) for not having any stake in submarine cable system but looking for clearance on behalf of the homeowners of submarine cable for laying/ sustaining such cables in Indian Territorial water/ Unique Economics Zones and in addition for making use of to arrange of Cable Touchdown Station (CLS) for such submarine cables. DoT has sought suggestions of TRAI on licensing framework and regulatory mechanism for submarine cables touchdown in India inside current UL-ILD/ standalone ILD license. TRAI has thus issued this Session Paper (CP) is to hunt views of stakeholders on the problems flagged within the reference obtained from DoT.
As well as, sure different points associated to submarine cables that the Authority has suo-moto recognized, have additionally been mentioned on this paper. Presently, there isn’t a Indian marine service supplier accessible who can help the submarine upkeep actions in and round Indian waters. Dependency on overseas vessels/service suppliers entails excessive mobilization time for the restore vessel to mobilized from completely different areas in world map. Authority, within the current session paper, is looking for views of stakeholder on want and feasibility of Indian Flagged vessel for finishing up submarine cable operation and upkeep easily in time-efficient method. Additionally, because the reliability and stability of submarine cable networks could be very excessive as in contrast with the terrestrial optical fibre cable community, home submarine cables could be envisaged to enhance digital connectivity/infrastructure of Tier-I and Tier-II cities on the Indian coast. The paper intends to search out out the deployment challenges and methods to overcome them to advertise home submarine cables in India. Additional, to discover the advantages and challenges concerned in laying Stub-cables, a brand new idea of inserting pre-laid open-ended “darkish fiber” from the CLS by Seaside Manhole (BMH) into the territorial waters for upcoming new cables has been mentioned for looking for views of stakeholders. Points associated to challenges being posed in establishing terrestrial connectivity between in another way situated Cable Touchdown Stations in India have additionally been raised for stakeholder’s session on this paper.
The Session Paper has been positioned on TRAl’s web site www.trai.gov.in. Written feedback on the Session Paper are invited from the stakeholders by 20th January 2023 and counter-comments, if any, by 03rd February2023.
The feedback could also be despatched, ideally in digital type at [email protected] with a duplicate to [email protected] For any additional clarification / info, Shri Sanjeev Kumar Sharma, Advisor (Broadband and Coverage Evaluation), TRAI could also be contacted at Phone Quantity Tel. No. +91-11-23236119.
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