Convergence, key to Indian telecom

BHOPAL: "Convergence of technologies and services can ensure the affordability criterion and help in growth of telecommunications sector in India," said BSNL deputy director general, SK Seth. Addressing a seminar on 'Future Trend in Telecommunication Technologies' in Indore, he gave an elaborate description of the available technologies and its economic viability in the Indian context. Aegis School of Telecommunication and G4 Solutions organized the seminar.

"Convergence means the triple play of voice, data and multimedia. The convergence of service would be a reality in a few years as a balance is achieved in price and affordability," he said. "For controlling price, one has to think big and earn on volumes not margins," he stressed.

On the growth of the section, Seth opined that the sector was unshackled after liberalization and witnessed a stupendous growth between 80 percent -100 percent annually. The reason for the boom in Asia-Pacific was also more due to the saturation in the American and European markets. Further, the large volume of customers in the region was the reason behind the low tariffs in the region. "India has the lowest GSM rates in the world. Thus, it is a win-win situation for the customers," Seth said. In the wireless sector, he felt there was an ongoing competition between GSM and CDMA.

On future trends, Seth spoke about the growth in optical fiber bandwidth, capable of carrying as much as 1000 GB of data through a single pair, while each optical pipe contains a minimum of 12 pairs. Speaking about Voice over IP (VoIP), he said that the only concern is the quality of the speech transferred through it, adding that its popularity is because it is not regulated.

Seth emphasized that companies used about 65 percent of their investments for developing access. "Access is the most important component and companies having large access are kings," he said. Talking about cable network in the country, Seth said that it was still in a shabby state. It is a shared one-way medium but had a penetration of about 55 million connections much more than the number of personal computers. "They would soon have to convert to two-way amplifiers from the present downward amplifiers," he said, adding that being a shared medium, the bandwidth gets greatly reduced.

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