BSNL held for Interconnectivity

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has pulled-up state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for not giving sufficient points of interconnect (PoIs) to private mobile operators, leading to a high level of congestion as also poor quality service.

TRAI, which had earlier issued show cause notices to private operators over this issue, has now hauled-up BSNL and told the PSU that this is one of the primary causes of increase in network congestion levels across the country.

The networks of private operators and BSNL are connected via PoIs, through which the traffic flows. The higher the traffic, the more the number of PoIs that are required to ensure that networks are congestion-free.

In a strongly-worded letter by TRAI secretary, Rajendra Singh, to BSNL chairman and managing director, A K Sinha, the former has brought to the notice of Sinha, the very high level of congestion that private mobile operators are facing at points of interconnect with the BSNL network.

As per this letter, the degree of congestion in many places is alarming. As of April 2006, in 404 PoIs the degree of congestion was greater than 5 percent, in 264 PoIs it was more then 10 percent, in 101 PoIs it was more than 40 percent, and in eight places the degree of congestion was more than 100 percent during peak hours.

Further, the letter says that the number of congested PoIs has increased from 336 in January 2006, to 517 in April.

The TRAI letter vindicates the charge private operators have often leveled against BSNL that they face delays and severe problems with BSNL as regards interconnection.

TRAI has also slammed BSNL over the fact that as many as 606 PoI requests from private operators are pending with the latter for which payments have already been made.

Significantly, TRAI's letter to BSNL comes at a time when the regulator has also written to the government, asking for it to make amendments in the TRAI Act so as to empower the regulator such that it can also enforce interconnect rules.