The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Central government’s guidelines challenged

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Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Central government’s guidelines challenged

Staff Reporter

CHENNAI: A Chennai-based consumer organisation has moved the Madras High Court challenging the Central government’s recent guidelines relating to auctioning and allotment of Spectrum for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) on the count that the guidelines are against Broadband Policy 2004 and against the right to access pure internet services.

The petitioner organisation, VOICE Consumer Care Council, submitted that auctioning Broadband Spectrum along with 3G spectrum would only increase the cost of Broadband connections as far as the consumer was concerned.

It said that the government was taking a double standard in its policy relating to internet service and in its bid process relating to auction.

It said that compared to the present cost of pure internet service, which is affordable and relatively accessible to the consumer, if the internet service under BWA was auctioned, that would increase the cost to the customers.

A Division Bench comprising Justices V. Dhanapalan and M. Sathyanarayanan ordered notice to the Central government and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India returnable by January 13, 2009.

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