Prospective ISPs queue up at DoT

Many of those who have signed so far are unheard entities from far away corners of the country, Parameshwaran said. State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited MTNL is the largest company to sign up so far. MTNL has decided to set up two international gateways with one each at Mumbai and Delhi to be independent of the till-date monopolistic Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited VSNL, its chairman and managing director S Rajagopalan said.

Besides using the gateways forits own internet service, MTNL would also offer it to other regional and local service providers on a commercial basis, he said.

Meanwhile, VSNL which currently offers about 1.5 lakh connections in the country is in a massive gearing up exercise to meet the challenges that will follow the opening up.

It is in the process of setting up a subsidiary called VSNL Seamless8217; for carrying out internet business in the country in a more vigorous manner. quot;We are ready to face the market competition,quot; Amitabh Kumar, chairman and managing director of the company, said.

He says VSNL tariff is one of the lowest in the world with Rs 20 per hour for general users and one rupee per hour for student surfers who are using a shell account.

VSNL insiders feel that this tariff structure is bound to put pressure on new entrants not to charge too much for surfing on the net. quot;VSNL has set the trendquot;, they believe. VSNL is also in the process of increasing its points of presence PoP from the existing 40 centres to 70 byyear-end, besides improving quality of service by increasing the speed to 56 kilobits per second KBPS from the present 33.4 KBPS.

However, the clause that allowed anybody to own and operate international gateways for internet service was a blow to DoT8217;s efforts to retain at least this monopoly with VSNL, feel information technology analysts. quot;We do not believe in monopoly, we welcome competition even in gateway operations of internet,quot; says Kumar.

Market analysts feel that the new guidelines are definitely advantageous to small service providers. They point out that to promote smaller companies and entrepreneurs, government has not fixed any licence fee from the operators.

Only a nominal fee of one rupee per connection was proposed from the fifth year of licence. The licence period is fixed for a period of 15 years with a possible extension of five years later.

The only hard condition in the guidelines was the clause for a bank guarantee of Rs two crore for a national service provider, Rs 20 lakhfor a regional provider and Rs three lakh for a local provider.