The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released a draft Telecommunication Tariff (70th Amendment) Order, 2024. The draft addresses the regulatory framework for Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI) scheme.
Under ‘Connect India’ mission, the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP), 2018 sought to enable deployment of 10 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022. Similarly, the Bharat 6G Vision also aims to have 10 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022 and 50 million by 2030. This is in line with Digital India 2030 mobile and broadband policy objectives of creating a robust digital communication infrastructure.
However, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in its communication to TRAI in November 2022, stated that the PM-Wani hotspot numbers presently lag significantly behind the targeted numbers envisaged in NDCP, and Bharat 6G vision documents the spread DoT attributed this lacklustre performance to the extremely high cost of backhaul internet connectivity charged by telecom service providers (TSPs) and internet service providers (ISPs) from public data offices (PDOs). Furthermore, DoT believes that in the name of commercial agreements, TSPs/ISPs often encourage PDOs to connect public Wi-Fi access points using expensive internet leased lines (ILL) instead of regular fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband connections.
Analysing the issue, TRAI is of the view that it is necessary to rationalise the cost of broadband connectivity to PDOs to pace up the success of PM-WANI scheme. Accordingly, it proposes that for the purpose of providing PM-WANI scheme, tariff for PDO under PM-Wani scheme shall be same as is applicable for retail broadband (FTTH) connections.
