BSNL & MTNL which together have 90% of India’s wirelines(landline) subscribers are opposed to opening their pipes to be accessed by private operators to provide broadband services. Broadband in India is termed as any “always-on” internet connection offering a speed of 256KBPs or more.
BSNL & MTNL together have 40 million(4 crores) wireline subscribers. TRAI had earlier recommended that BSNL and MTNL open their pipes to private operators because most of the recent growth in telecom has been in the wireless segment. BSNL & MTNL are of the opinion that private operators lay down their own pipe, which has been a very slow process till now. Private operators like Reliance which have more than 40,000Km fibre optic network connecting every remote village is unable to use it and most of Reliance Infocomms bandwidth is dark fibre. BSNL and MTNL provide their own broadband services – DataOne Broadband and Triband Broadband respectively.
