In National Telecom Policy 2012, the government plans to raise the broadband download speed of to 512 kbps from 256 kbps and later to 2 Mbps by 2015. And also as per Trai data, total broadband subscribers in the country rose by 5.82 per cent to 65.33 million at the end of May 2014.

As per Broadband policy 2004, the Broadband was defined as “An always on data connection that is able to support interactive service including Internet access and has the capability of the minimum download speed of 256 kilo bits per second (kbps) to an individual subscriber from the point of presence (POP) of the service provider intending to provide Broadband service where multiple such individual Broadband connections are aggregated and the subscriber is able to access the interactive services including the Internet through this POP. The interactive services will exclude any services for which a separate licence is specifically required, for example, real time voice transmission, except to the extent that it is presently permitted under ISP licence with Internet Telephony”.

The amendment has been made to the Telecom Consumers Complaint Redressal Regulations, 2012 and the regulations will be called the Telecom Consumers Complaint Redressal (Third Amendment) Regulations, 2014.

Trai new definition for broadband is “a data connection that is able to support interactive services including internet access and has the capability of minimum download speed of 512 kbps to an individual subscriber from the point of presence (POP) of the service provider intending to provide broadband service".

TRAI also initiated the process for framing rules linked to modern networks that will be installed soon, especially for 4G services.

At present, there are regulations that ensure that none of the players face discrimination or cartelisation by their competitors by rejecting or degrading connectivity of network.

However, telecom networks in place are mostly based on old technologies. Networks based on internet protocol will start a new phase of enhanced quality.

The new IP based network as well as its co-existence with legacy network will give rise to several operational, interconnection and quality of service issues which needs to be addressed for the successful migration to IP based networks.