Section 48 in International Telecommunication Cable Landing Stations Access Facilitation Charges and Co-location Charges Regulations, 2012
48. Most of the stakeholders, who have participated in this consultation process, have reasoned that the cost of access facilitation should come down further because of multifold increase in capacity utilisation of the cable landing stations and the associated economies of scale. They have further asserted that these charges are quite significant percentage of the international bandwidth cost which also affect the cost borne by the end users. On the other hand, M/s TCL and M/s Bharti Airtel have argued that there is enough competition in the market because new cable landing stations have been set up by others. It is a fact that some new cable landing stations have come up during this period and these new OCLSs have also emphasized the need for regulation for access facilitation charges and co-location charges. BSNL has raised an issue that due to drastic reduction in the overall price of International bandwidth in the market and high access facilitation charges it has become costlier for it to access its own bandwidth in the EIG cable system. BSNL is a consortium partner in the EIG cable system for which the cable landing station at Mumbai is owned by M/s Bharti Airtel Ltd. Though, M/s TCL have submitted that co-location charges and AFC need not be regulated but on the contrary have stated that one of the new OCLSs failed to provide access to its CLS to M/s TCL. The Authority noted that though these issues are not relevant for the purposes of present consultation process, however, these issues highlight the need for effective regulations for access facilitation charges and co-location charges at Cable Landing Stations.
