Trai caps connectivity costs for public Wi-Fi providers

The telecom regulator has capped broadband connectivity costs of public Wi-Fi service providers at double the rates of home broadband services, brushing aside opposition from telcos, to boost internet accessibility under the Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-Wani) initiative.

“Every service provider providing retail FTTH (wired) broadband services shall offer all of its retail FTTH broadband plans up to 200 Mbps to the PDOs (public data offices that offer Wi-Fi services) under the PM-Wani scheme, at tariff not exceeding twice the tariff applicable to the retail subscribers for the corresponding FTTH broadband plan of the bandwidth (capacity) offered,” the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said in its tariff order issued on Monday.

The move aims to significantly boost the number of public Wi-Fi hotspots under PM-Wani, which is nowhere near the target set at the launch of the scheme in 2020 – creating 10 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022 and 50 million by 2030. As on April 30, there were only 278,801 deployed PM-Wani Wi-Fi hotspots in the country.

Trai said the proposed tariff framework takes into account prevailing market scenarios, current levels of adoption of PM-Wani service, and the potential future growth.

Key objectives of the PM-Wani initiative include providing high-speed and affordable internet access in rural and underserved areas as well as in public spaces such as railway stations, banks and post offices.

Local shopkeepers, retailers and chaiwalas were encouraged to become public Wi-Fi providers, or PDOs, for last-mile internet delivery without the need of a permit or registration fee.

Telecom operators had argued that lowering broadband connectivity costs would allow PDOs to make unjustified profits, riding on telcos’ expensive network infrastructure and denting their revenue.

But the regulator has argued that the high rates demanded by telcos are the primary reason for low demand for PDO licences under the PM-Wani initiative.

Trai noted that in the name of commercial agreement, telecom and internet service providers often pushed public Wi-Fi providers to connect the access points using the expensive internet leased line (ILL), instead of the regular wired broadband connection, popularly called home broadband.

The tariff cap will apply to all fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) plans up to 200 megabits per second (Mbps) offered by the service providers to the PDOs.

As per Trai, the pricing framework has been designed to appropriately balance the interests of all stakeholders by ensuring affordability for small PDOs while also providing reasonable compensation for the broadband connection to the service providers.