It will pave way for individual and government initiated, tele-medicine, rural health, micro finance, weather and crop data, distance learning, e-governance etc.

Rural India is an untapped market in a large sense. When 2G came up, hardly did anyone give a chance to the remote areas. However, today they have realized that it is an important market.  Unless rural area is involved, it will restrict options for service providers.

CIOL: Do you think that India should move on to 4G, and it is late for 3G?

GA & NK: 4G has not yet been rolled out in a widespread manner. Except for one company, worldover. No other company has deployed 4G.

In fact, deployment is the next step, development of many devices under 4G is still in progress. So, we don't expect a major deployment until late 2010.

With regard to being late for the deployment of 3G, yes we are a bit late here. However, everything is set and 3G is just round the corner.

Moreover, India has proved time and again that our demands are no less than any other, in terms of speed, cutting-edge power or technology. So, whether India would be laid down or is late for 4G is out of question.

Whether to go for the next level is the prerogative of the end user. If a consumer is satisfied with the speed which he will get with 3G, why would one think of the next level, which could be unaffordable?

That said apart, moving on to the next generation will be difficult because it requires huge investments to begin with. Whereas, for 3G, everything is set and it can also work hand in hand with the present technologies, after certain upgrades.

So, today, the question is not whether we would jump or not, but how much do we want and are ready to pay at this point of time. Overall, network change is going to be a big task, for any service provider.

So, customer expectation and demand will drive the service providers to take the call on investments that is required for 4G, because it would require a new lease of equipments, networks to work on those speeds, devices to work on those demands.

CIOL: What is Agilent doing in this space?

GA & NK: Agilent has a presence in the T&M, communication and technology space. In India, we have customers from all domains, at least for technologies which are rampant like 2G and 3G.

We have test offerings for different set of customers. Such as, when a company starts to get into a new technology like WiMAX or LTE, it begins with design, then it moves on to conformance testing, then to manufacturing and then deployment. Agilent has offerings, which will help enable these technologies across this lifecycle.

Moreover, one of things that we help do is to simulate a network for a service provider and help them do a proof of concept and service, a kind of artificial network testing. Predominantly, it happens on a wireline network. On wireless side we provide tools to test how good  transmitting or receiving devices are.

In most of these networks, 3G and WiMAX, one thing that is coming very clearly is the assurance part. Once you roll a network you can assure your customers a particular level of service.