Nasscom pegs bandwidth requirement at 230 GB by '05

NEW DELHI: Nasscom is revisiting the projections for the country's bandwidth

requirement made under its earlier initiative ‘Operation Bandwidth’ and has

pegged it at 230 GBPS by 2005 as against the earlier projection of 300 GBPS

during the same period.

The revisit was deemed necessary since the objectives of Operation Bandwidth

was to create awareness about the demand inherent in the country. The imperative

now is to present a realistic picture of the country's bandwidth requirement so

that the government and the private sector can have guidelines in the planning

process.

Operation Bandwidth, launched in the middle of last year, triggered off huge

public debates about the country's abysmal bandwidth availability leading to the

government's decision to open up the sector by 2002.

Speaking about Nasscom's latest initiative, Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom,

said, "My concern today is about the fledging call center industry and the

huge potential India has as a destination for business process outsourcing.

Bandwidth is the life-line for this set of industries."

According to the initial findings of the study, the country's current

bandwidth requirement is 5.5 GBPS as against the current availability at

approximately 2 GBPS. By 2005, Nasscom estimates that while there would be a

requirement of 230 GBPS, the actual availability would be around 71.72 GBPS.

This is after taking into account local dialing and local hosting possibilities.

However, even with the current availability of 2 GBPS, VSNL claims that there

are no takers and there is in fact idle capacity. This is because there is lack

of capacity in the domestic connectivity as well as problems in the last mile

connectivity.

Nasscom's study is being conducted in collaboration with IDC, McKinsey, World

Bank, ITES, ISPAI and the recommendations are expected to come in phases. While

the first phase would estimate the county's requirement in the international

sector, subsequent efforts would be directed towards addressing the issues of

domestic connectivity and the last mile.

Says Karnik, "We are deeply aware of the issues of domestic connectivity

as well as the last mile and shall address them in our subsequent

recommendations." As for domestic connectivity, Karnik says that DWDM is

the way to go if capacity is to increase exponentially.