TRAI weighs options for increased private involvement in BharatNet, but are the telcos ready?

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is weighing ways to increase the involvement of private players in BharatNet, or the National Optic Fibre Project, which has been designed to provide broadband to every nook and corner of the country.

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Going by media report, the telecom regulator is likely to submit its recommendations to the government by the month-end for implementing the project with a greater private partnership.

But the moot point is—are the telcos or the private players ready to be a part of this project?

The telecom operators are already shelling a huge amount of money for USOF fund, they are also investing heavily in modernizing the networks and also bracing themselves up for the upcoming spectrum auctions to tap spectrum to pull off data demand. So, in such a scenario can we expect more investment from the private players for this national project?

Rajan Mathews, Director General, COAI, the GSM lobby group, had said: “The BharatNet project does not include service offering as it is focused on laying of optic fiber only. For end-to-end services, telcos will have to set up their own infrastructure at the gram panchayat level.” “Until and unless a strong business case is built including designing of the services, provisioning of these services to the customers, hosting and tariff options, affordable smartphones, affordable data plans, etc, there will be no takers for this connectivity at the block level,” he added.

Recently, Gopal Vittal, CEO, Bharti Airtel, has also hinted that the company is not going to play a role in BharatNet during a press meet.

It should be noted here that the project has already missed its two earlier deadlines and now it has been totally revamped. It targets to connect 2.5 lakh villages by December 2018 and for that, involvement of the private players is very crucial.