How do you see the trends in the Indian broadband industry?
We are more bullish about wireless technologies in driving the broadband adoption especially in countries like India. Compelling services can actually drive broadband growth. Today customers are demanding more than data through broadband. Once the operators start delivering new services like Video, IPTV etc, broadband will become a basic necessity. But, I still feel that two million connections is a very small number, in a country of this size. And the target of 9 million connections by the end of this year seems to be a tough task. We really need huge investment to boost the broadband industry in India. Broadband has wider scope in rural areas especially in the areas of healthcare and education. The government has plans to deploy broadband right from the Panchayath level. It's a very positive trend. Since infrastructure is going to be a problem, wireless may be a better option for rural connectivity. So, lots of industry players are betting on one or the other sort of wireless technology for India. I would say, technically wireless is more feasible for India.

Can you do a comparison of the Indian market with other countries' markets? Is India a specific case?
I would say India is pretty slow in adopting broadband. In US they have almost 200 million broadband connections. In India we are still talking about hitting nine million. But, in one way, it's a positive trend. It's going to be more painful for developed countries to shift to emerging wireless technologies like Wimax, because they have already spend enough money on the installed infrastructure. But in India, the investment so far has been very low. So we can actually skip some intermediate steps in broadband technology adoption and directly implement wireless technologies.

The other major difference is in the demand of customers. In India, the demand is still for data. In developed countries, the demand is more for high definition video content and other such services. In India, of course, we have voice, IPTV etc coming in a larger way. Online gaming is other such potential application, which is likely to drive the need for broadband in India.

Does India lack something today in adopting broadband? What are the issues to be addressed immediately and in a long run?
For the customers, the only thing that matters is the content being delivered through broadband. You are not going to pay for the water pipe, you pay only for the water. In fact, in future, the operators are going to give free broadband connection. BSNL has already declared that they will give 2Mbps connection free by 2009. Later on, services like voice, video on demand, online gaming etc are likely to be delivered free of cost and the operators will be able to address the ARPU (average revenue per user) concerns.