KATHMANDU, NEPAL: The VOICE&DATA SAARC CEO Conclave, SAARC communication industry's discussion forum, held its sixth version at Kathmandu, the picturesque capital of Nepal, from October 25-28.

A panel discussion on "Speeding Broadband Penetration" was held on the second day of the CEO Conclave at Kathmandu, Nepal. The discussion was moderated by Kasturi Bhattacharjee, senior principal consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) India.

The discussion covered topics like the status of broadband penetration in the SAARC countries; which technologies can optimize broadband expansion: DSL, ADSL, WiMax, Wi-Fi, 3G, Metro Ethernet, etc in the SAARC region; what killer apps (country specific) are needed for enabling broadband expansion; and what are the regulatory hurdles and how can they be overcome.

Sharing her views on broadband, Ruzan Khambatta, director, E Comm Opportunities said penetration of broadband can definitely increase but the efforts have to be put in two ways. One is through improvement in the speed of broadband and second is infrastructure development. According to her, despite the considerable interest in the Internet in India, the ISP market has been in disarray.

Lack of infrastructure is a major challenge ISPs face in rolling out services in an efficient manner. She also emphasized on taking into account different topographies while rolling out services.

According to her, one way to increase the penetration rate is laying emphasis on infrastructure sharing among providers so that the cost of service comes down and services are offered to consumers at an affordable price. Consequently, the issues of poor local-content availability in India should get resolved as bigger broadband subscription numbers are likely to encourage more content providers.

Amitabh Singhal, replying to Khambatta's query, said India and the other SAARC countries are going wireless. He said that the wireless broadband market is poised to take off in a big way in India. Though both wireline and wireless broadband will grow rapidly, the latter will grow faster in comparison to wireline. The biggest difference between the two is that a wireless broadband network can be deployed faster and is less expensive to maintain.