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being used for voice communications on major trunk routes. On lesser trunk routes,
bandwidth is limited to 560 Mbps.
In the Internet business, it is the increase in supply of bandwidth which creates
higher demand. This has been proved in countries like the USA. We need to change
our mindset in India, and not wait for demand to grow before providing bandwidth.
India’s international and national bandwidth requirement is expected to reach
300
Gbps by 2005 from the current demand of 10 Gbps. The demand would
mainly come from B2B, B2C, communications, entertainment, residential
video services, software exports, education, IT-enabled services, banking and
the financial industry.
We would require 64 Kbps for basic animation services: 200 Kbps for distance
education; 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps for virtual reality and so on.
This apart, the installed base of PCs would zoom from 4.2 million (as on March 31,
2000)
to 20 million by 2008. Internet subscribers, at less than one million now, are
going to be 35 million by that time. Internet users, meanwhile, would grow from 4 million
to around 100 million. Fixed phones would increase from 26 million to 125 million. TV sets,
products with the largest installed base would grow from 75 million to 225 million by 2008.
The cable TV business, too, represents an interesting picture. Numbers are expected
to almost double from 37 million this year to 70 million by 2008. Cable TV is
going to play a major role in Internet proliferation. Companies across the country
are sinking optical fiber, not only for providing Internet services but also for high
resolution TV and many other applications.
The question is how can we realize these benefits and exploit the technology
potential for our country? The answer is simple. We should encourage
unlimited competition. The strategy should combine laying state-of-the-art fiber
optic networks across the country and using wireless and other technologies
at the periphery. To facilitate the installation of a high speed network
throughout the country, Nasscom plans to work closely with the DoT, VSNL,
private telcos and ISPs.
The disparity between national and international bandwidth leaves out rural and
remote routes from proper connectivity. Capacity can be substantially increased
