SME Times News Bureau | 22 Jan, 2018
Broadband India Forum (BIF) on Sunday said that telecom
regulator TRAI's recommendation on in-flight connectivity (IFC) in Indian
airspace will benefit travellers and lead to additional revenue generation for
service providers.
"BIF supports the recommendations completely and believes that this will
largely benefit the air travellers over India... lead to additional revenues
for the service providers and the government besides bringing about
socio-economic benefits to all," T.V. Ramachandran, President, BIF was
quoted in a statement as saying.
"Inflight connectivity and access to the Internet is available today in
many parts of the world. We are somewhat behind other countries."
Ramachandran urged the DOT (Department of Telecommunications) for "an
early acceptance and implementation of these recommendations in co-ordination
with MoCA (Ministry of Civil Aviation)".
On January 19 TRAI recommended that phone calls can be made or received and
Internet services can be accessed beyond 3,000 metres. The height restriction
is placed to avoided accessing the terrestrial mobile networks.
Further, TRAI said to promote the adoption of in-flight connectivity, IFC
service providers should be allowed to be set up at a flat annual token licence
fee of Re 1.
In addition, the framework recommended for IFC services in Indian airspace
should be made applicable to all types of aircraft such as commercial airlines,
business jets and executive aircraft.