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YEAR-ENDER SPL | Year of public-private partnership

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: Probably for the first time the Indian IT industry saw mixed growth with the government taking the lead and private players also adhering to it. The industry growth has indeed to be credited to the positive sign of the government taking an inclusive strategy by adopting and announcing policies, which further boosts the Indian economy.

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CyberMedia News explores the major milestones which India crossed in 2007 and the progress we have made so far.

Information superhighway

The year began with a spectacular start with the then Union IT and Communications minister proclaiming 2007 as the ‘Year of Broadband’ to increase PC penetration. The campaign was also to lay the backbone for the ambitious National e-governance plan.

Maran also laid down the point at the CEOs roundtable on the sidelines of India Telecom 2007 held in January, and the telecom companies had also taken it seriously, or so it seems.

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Even as India was lagging behind in the broadband target of 3 million set as early as 2005, which we did not reach till the beginning of this year, Maran took a bold step in defining the next strategy. And that is the ambitious target of 9 million by this year-end.

For a diverse demographic country such as India, going wireless was the only solution, and so did the Telco’s adopted the model. While Airtel has already announced plans of offering GPRS-enabled mobile handsets at affordable rates, Reliance and Tata have also joined the bandwagon by offering Internet-enabled handsets.

With WiMAX and WiFi yet to be announced officially in India, private players took the first step forward by conducting successful trials and also rolling out in small pockets across the country.

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First to take the lead was Aircel, followed by Airtel. State-owned operators MTNL and BSNL, not to be left behind, also had their share of the success story, which is yet to be revealed. Both the operators are expected to come out with tenders for the same beginning 2008.

 
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Spectrum

Eight operators trying for a grab of 25 Mhz of spectrum and the ball is now in the court of the king of controversial times – Raja, who just passed the buck to the defence ministry. After all, they are politicians you see.

While the telecom operators want additional spectrum for rolling out first 2G and then 3G services for sustain the growth momentum, the government has a different reasons, it was the TRAI then the TEC and now a Telecom panel which will recommend what needs to be done.

Hopefully, let the New Year begin with a good bandwidth, or else remember your SMS being undelivered due to network jams.

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Telecom targets

India created history by getting into the circle of countries with highest mobile addition levels with 21 per cent teledensity. The country now stands third in the world in subscriber additions and second largest in terms of handset shipments only after China.

As usual the government set the target of 250 million by year-end, a number which India crossed six-weeks ahead of scheduled deadline. This may be a good sign of growth but no one seems to talking about the drop of subscribers which will only be established the day mobile number portability is allowed. The government has shown positive signs of announcing a plan and strategy for the same in early November 2007. It will then be known whether we break our own records of the set target of 500 million by 2010.

Semicon

Giving a boost to the IT manufacturing industry, the government announced draft guidelines for the semiconductor industry. And for the first time, the Indian government took a stake in the industry by announcing an investment stake in the projects. The comprehensive policy, which was redrafted and announced by the latter incumbent minister for IT and communications, A Raja also, was a thrust for an eco-system built-up.

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Though the much-awaited policy came late, and with a cap of three units by 2010, only one company, namely Infineon/ HSMC consortium had announced plans and that too has not taken-off as the firm is looking for a good place for its Fab.

Incidentally, other companies, such as Intel, which had gone to Israel for want of a policy or the SemIndia project at Hyderabad too has not taken off.

Now it is for the industry to wait and watch how the other semiconductor majors from across the world will be approaching India as a manufacturing destination, moving away from the brand India image of service industry alone. However, the semiconductor policy will only be complete once the IT hardware manufacturing policy is also announced in 2008, to put India on the IT hardware growth map, and repeat success as we did in the software and services segment.

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