Earlier this year, department of telecom had levied an entry fee of up to Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million) and a licence fee of 8 per cent per annum on ISPs offering the Virtual Private Network services.
Later ISPs approached TDSAT, which directed the DoT to seek TRAI suggestions before putting any charges on ISPs.
TRAI has suggested an entry fee of Rs 30 lakh for 'Layer-2' VPN services, saying it should be regulated in the same way as existing Internet access while for 'Layer 3', the regulator has mooted nil entry fee.
"It has been recommended that Layer-3 VPN should be regulated in the same way as existing Internet access and Layer-2 VPN to be treated similar to VSAT service, which provides data connectivity in a close user group environment, for the purpose of levy of nominal entry fee," TRAI said.
According to TRAI, the two types of VPN -- Layer 2 and Layer 3 - need to be differentiated. While Layer 2 does not need access to Internet and Layer 3 needs access to Internet. For both Layer-2 and Layer-3 VPN services, there will be no annual licence fee, it said.
Since Layer 3 Internet cannot be separated from normal Internet access and hence no additional regulatory burden is warranted for the same over and above the requirement of existing ISP licence (Re 1).
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