Lets Play Restrictions

Yet another stupid decision by TRAI which restricts ISPs to offer Private Leased Lines and services such as VPN :

BSNL had argued that ISPs, who do not pay any entry fee or licence fee, should not be allowed to offer corporate leased line service as it was infringing on the turf of long distance operators. Companies such as Sify, HCL Infinet and Tata Internet had made representation to the regulator against the stance taken by BSNL.

The telecom regulator has taken a position favouring BSNL by saying that the public sector company was justified in its demand, as ISPs were not eligible to provide services such as VPN.

This service is used by large corporates to network all their branch offices spread across the country.

However, a TRAI report on the issue said that BSNL was fair in demanding that ISPs can use the leased lines only for Internet purpose and not resell it, because they were not entitled to do the business of reselling bandwidth leased from other telecom service providers.