TRAI sees 20 million broadband users by 2010

NEW DELHI: More than urban India, it will be rural India that would reap benefits with the introduction of broadband telecommunication services, said D. P. Seth, member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).






"Over broadband connectivity, besides voice, many non-voice benefits like distance education, tele-medicine, farm extension services too will become possible. This is besides the fact that the Indian rural population will become part of the information age", he added.





Seth was speaking as the chief guest at the Wireless and Mobile India 2004 International Conference held in the country's capital, organized by Bharat Exhibitions. TRAI has recommended a target of 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010. He further added that "Six to seven million of these probably will use DSL technologies, the balance will be served by other competing technologies such as Metro Ethernet, Fibre to the kerb, 3GPP, WiMax and other emerging technologies. However, the success of broadband would depend upon the quality of the service and the content that will be provided.

According to P. S. Saran, former Secretary, Department of Telecom Services and member Telecom Commission, "Internet services like e-Chaupal by ITC have demonstrated the value of Internet for rural areas". However he was not very optimistic about Broadband services taking of rapidly. "Technologies are available for providing broadband services to rural areas, but the market will finally decide which of these competing technologies would actually thrive," he said.

Saran, denied the charge that the Government owned telecom service providers like BSNL was not catering to rural audiences. According to him, BSNL was focusing on rural areas, but the success of rural connectivity will ultimately depend heavily on the local content.






N. K. Goyal, President, Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association dwelt on the business potential of wireless growth in supporting local manufacturing of equipment. He wanted government policies to focus on domestic manufacture and turning India into a big telecom equipment-manufacturing hub like China. He lamented the fact that the mobile phones were not being manufacturing locally despite the fact, the market for the same was growing at a very respectable pace with a current trend suggesting a requirement of over 2 million mobile phones per year.





Seth said that Broadband services to rural area should be offered at affordable costs to be effective for which he suggested can happen only if the input costs are kept low. The TRAI member also revealed that the regulator was about to come out with its recommendations on unified license for all services. This had become inevitable as the boundaries between various services were getting blurred due to the tremendous progress in technology. He also mentioned that charging based on distance is no longer relevant.





The potential of Internet based communication systems to raise productivity and efficiency was the theme of a keynote presentation that Jagbir Singh, Group CTO, Bharti Infotel presented at the conference. Singh pointed out that at present there were approximately 200,000 broadband subscribers in India. The impediments to growth of Wireless broadband were limited availability of spectrum, non-availability of standards based technologies at the right cost. But he was hopeful that soon the battle between 3GPP and WiMax would get settled and this will give immense growth to Wireless Broadband.

While making his presentation, Biswapati Chaudhuri, Director, Wireless monitoring unit, Department of Telecommunication (DoT) said "delicensing of 2.5 GHz spectrum allocation would promote larger use of the latest Wi-Fi technologies. Paramjit Singh Puri, South- east Asia head of Pronto Networks dwelt on the new generation networks capable of providing multiple services from the same point. GSA India chapter Chairman, A. Sethuraman was among the others who made detailed presentations at the inaugural meet.






The Wireless and Mobile India conference assumes significance also in the context of the rapid progress of mobile subscriptions that has crossed 40 million mark and is likely to leave behind the landline subscriber base. In fact, Saran referred to this phenomenon and projected a scenario where India would have 100 million wireless phones soon.

The TRAI recommendations on unified services licensing are likely to come out soon and when implemented, would remove many of the constraints in the growth of mobile phones. The immediate challenge was integrate mobile phones with Internet to widen the range of services that mobile phones could provide.