<incom> FW: Broadband to go free in 2 yrs in all of India to everyone (fwd)

[Michael Gurstein]

This is astonishing and exciting news if true as reported!

MG

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 09:27:02 -0700
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne at dandin.com>
To: 1st-mile-nm at crank.dcn.davis.ca.us
Subject: [1st-mile-nm] Broadband to go free in 2 yrs in all of India to
    everyone

[Note:  It looks like exciting things are in store for India as far as
broadband is concerned.  So where is this kind of bold thinking here in
the U.S.?  DLH]

Broadband to go free in 2 yrs
JOJI THOMAS PHILIP
TIMES NEWS NETWORK


[ THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007 02:00:26 AM]
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Broadband_to_go_free_in_2_yrs/
articleshow/1955351.cms>

NEW DELHI: The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free,
high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state- owned
telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer,
the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.
You have heard of free municipal broadband - many cities in the US have
drenched themselves in wireless broadband connectivity which is freely
accessible to residents. The idea is to boost economic activity in
general. The government of India plans to achieve free broadband
connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second across the country, with a
similar goal. Senior government officials expect to be able to achieve
this goal spending only a portion of the corpus of the Universal Service
Obligation Fund (USOF).

All telecom operators contribute 5% of their revenues every year to
USOF. It is estimated that the unutilised sum from the USOF has touched
Rs 9,194.12 crore by March, 2007-end.

The current technological trend is for voice calls also to shift to the
internet, using voice over internet protocol (VOIP). The quality of VOIP
calls, patchy to start off with, has been improving steadily over the
years and by 2009, is likely to be as good as current analogue calls
that establish a circuit between the calling and called parties. When
that happens, revenue streams from calls would dry up and telecom
companies would need to develop value-added applications to make money
from the connectivity they provide for free or virtually free.

The department of telecom (DoT) will be taking a series of steps to make
its plans for free broadband a reality. These include, using the USOF to
set an extensive optic cable network across the country, opening up the
long-distance sectors to further competition, allowing free and fair
access to cable landing stations, permitting the resale of bandwidth,
setting up web hosting facilities within the country and asking all
internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange
of India (NIXI).

With international bandwidth rates in India being between two-to-five
times higher than the global standards, the DoT will also go all out to
break the monopoly of existing national and international distance
players in a bid to induce cut throat competition in this sector. "India
has only a handful of NLD/ILD operators while small countries such as
Singapore and Taiwan have over 30 and 60 long distance operators
respectively.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--

Broadband initiatives: Speed it up
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

[ FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2007 12:00:01 AM]
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/
Broadband_initiatives_Speed_it_up/articleshow/1962328.cms>

The government's reported proposal to provide free broadband access is a
good idea, it would enhance economic activity and boost productivity. It
must, however, simultaneously speed-up 3G rollout and facilitate
convergence, enabling telecom companies to provide value-added services
to make up for the loss of conventional internet and voice business,
which is likely to shift in a big way to the internet over the next few
years. At first reading the government's proposal to provide free
broadband access by 2009 through BSNL and MTNL appears to be the usual
arm twisting of state-owned companies into populist unviable schemes. On
the contrary, the details show it to be a logical outcome of a series of
measures that would reduce the cost of providing broadband access to
almost zero in two years.

In that sense the free broadband scheme would be almost akin to BSNL's
'One India' scheme that forced private operators into offering similar
plans and thereby reduced telecom tariffs. The government has already
initiated bidding for the creation of universal service obligation fund
(USOF) supported independent mobile infrastructure in rural areas, and
provision of rural mobile services.

Since the initial results have shown the burden on the fund to be a lot
less than expected, it makes sense to use the near Rs 10,000 fund to
plug the telecom infrastructure holes. And this is exactly what the
government appears to have decided upon. It wants to use the fund to
create a pan-India fibre optic network and encourage web hosting.

In conjunction with other measures such as allowing more long distance
players and routing all internet traffic through the National Internet
Exchange of India would encourage competition and keep internal internet
traffic within India, precluding unnecessary use of bandwidth. This
infrastructure initiative and increased competition would make free
broadband viable.

However, much of this depends on the spectrum riddle. The government
must quickly decide on the modalities of 3G rollout and the spectrum
issues, as 3G is essentially high-speed wireless broadband and the key
to providing internet services in remote areas.

The policy should provide for an efficient utilisation of the scarce
resource. In that sense government's thinking on permitting bandwidth
resale and allowing new players to bid for spectrum is welcome. It would
infuse competition and thereby help lower costs.
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