Broadband

As reported previously, the SEA-ME-WE-4 undersea cable linking 14 countries across Asia, Africa and Europe has gone live as scheduled. Both VSNL and Bharti have a stake in this joint venture. VSNL will also function as the primary network administrator of the venture.

India is now officially a bandwidth surplus country, and international bandwidth prices are expected to fall steadily as a result of this development.

At the Broadband Tech India 2005 conference yesterday:

TRAI chairman Pradip Baijal: BSNL should share its network with other operators to promote broadband connectivity. Not doing so will only promote other private players.

BSNL director (finance) SD Saxena: BSNL can not share its network just because it has one. It will not be able to bear the loss incurred by sharing its network with others.

The SEA-ME-WE-4 submarine cable network has been completed and is ready to be commissioned. However, Indian 'security agencies' apparently need to provide the go-ahead before this can happen. Upon commissioning, India's external bandwidth (via submarine networks) will jump up to about 540 Gbps. The SMW-4 cable will eventually be upgraded to provide a capacity of 1.2 Tbps.

The cable runs through 14 countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy and France.

In a bid to avoid duplication of common infrastructure thereby promoting growth in the sector, the DoT has proposed that independent infrastructure providers be allowed to set up base in the country and lease their networks to all operators.

This practice is common in the international market, where a large number of optic fibre cable (OFC) operators and international long-distance submarine cable operators lease their infrastructure to consortiums of telecom operators.

Considering the poor uptake of broadband in India, the TRAI is now pushing DTH providers to enter the broadband segment. There are apparently close to 1 million DTH users in India primarily in rural/remote areas, who will benefit from this service.

However, considering that this is a one-way service, wherein the satellite only provides the downstream, it is unclear how these providers are planning on managing the upstream transfer. Dial-up will very likely be prohibitively expensive and inevitably unreliable.

VSNL's appeal to block the TRAI's proposed bandwidth rate cuts has been dismissed. The TDSAT upheld the TRAI's directive after the data that formed the basis for the recommended bandwidth price ceilings were produced.

Full story: Sify.

BSNL has gone on a renewed marketing blitz to attract more customers to its broadband service. The latest move includes a reduction in the HCL PC + BSNL Broadband offer, dropping the price down to Rs.500 per month. Moreover, the monthly modem rental of Rs.100 has also been dropped.

Besides the PC combo, BSNL are also offering discounts and freebies to dial-up users and new phone subscribers. All this is in a bid to meet a target of 1 million subscribers (previously an ambitious 3 million) by the end of this financial year. The current BSNL subscriber base stands at a modest 235,000.

MTNL, in a bid to meet subscriber targets, has lowered the price of its basic plan from Rs.399/month to Rs.199/month. These basic plans are however, severely restricted by extremely low download limits.

It is expected that BSNL - MTNL's sister company - will soon follow suit.

GAIL, PowerGrid Corporation Ltd and RailTel have entered into a strategic alliance to pool their bandwidth infrastructure, thereby forming India's second largest (after BSNL) bandwidth network. The three companies control close to 60,000 kms of fibre between them, and are scheduled to increase this even further in the next few years.

Bombay's Park Plaza Towers is reportedly going to be offering its residents Broadband over Power Line (BPL) Internet access. The service is being provided by PLC Network Solutions, a subsidiary of Trimax Corporation (formerly KIWI Network Solutions Inc. and Koala International Wireless previous to that).

PLC's new 205 mbps devices will provide The Park Plaza Towers with symmetrical upload and download speeds of 20-30 mbps -- enough to fully exploit high-bandwidth applications such as VoIP, video-on-demand and IPTV.