TRAI has woken up to the fact that 512Kbps is not enough, thanks to Stakeholders

[pillaicha]

No that has existed for over a decade. It still isn’t profitable for companies to roll out Fiber in rural areas. In Rural places houses are really far apart. Even 50% of the cost incentive isn’t enough to encourage private players. Jio’s finances are another story altogether so it remains to be seen if Jio will actually expand to rural areas. My guess is Jio will stick to major towns of major districts and maybe use LCOs for areas beyond such towns. But the thing is in rural areas, there’ll always be that lone local ISP reselling a small leased line to such drastic contention ratios that it simply sucks but its cheap so rural people will prefer it. Also such ISPs are long running members of cable mafias and handsomely pay the LCO good commissions to stay exclusive, and it’s simply unfeasible for any large national or regional operator to work there. So the incentive is mainly used by LCO entrepreneurs who are locals of the same area.

 

[pillaicha]

If the government wants to improve wireline teledensity in rural areas, states must adopt the infrastructure roll out on their own and then lease it out to a company for maintenance. That infrastructure can be leased out by the company on behalf of the state government to other ISPs. This is the only viable solution in rural areas besides wireless fixed access. KFON is an example.