Trai opens access to cable landing system

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday issued a draft regulation mandating open access to cable landing stations. This move is expected to offer bandwidth to end consumers at competitive rates. The regulation talks about new ILD operators and internet service providers (ISPs) having access to the capacity at cable landing stations, “in the same way as the consortium members”.

Also, the TRAI regulation states that charges must be transparent and non-discriminatory to both consortium members and non-members. By stepping up competition in the market, this regulation would ultimately result in reduction in the price of international private leased circuits.

International leased circuits are used by exporters, BPO units, call centres, banks, small and medium enterprises, ISPs and IT-enabled service providers. Also, international long distance (ILD) operators require bandwidth connectivity for carrying international voice calls.

This regulation was needed because some operators have been facing problems while accessing bandwidth capacity at the cable landing station of an existing operator, TRAI said.Regulators in many countries have recognised that submarine landing station is an essential bottleneck facility and there is a potential for the owner of the cable landing station to deny access and prevent competition from new entrants, according to TRAI.

“In order to prevent the misuse of dominant power by the incumbent operator, various countries have enforced specific obligations on the incumbents owning submarine cable system by applying the general interconnect agreement,” the regulator said.