‘The telecom regulator needs to intervene and open up the bandwidth market’

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: The Nasdaq-listed, Sify Ltd was one of India’s first Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The company, which started as an ISP, now offers integrated end-to-end network services, security services and applications services. R Ramaraj who spearheaded the launch of Sify is currently the managing director and chief executive officer of the company. Shabana Hussain of FE spoke to Mr Ramaraj on the future of internet in India and what needs to be done to improve internet penetration in the country. Excerpts from the interview:

What is the future of the internet market in India?

When the internet was privatised by the government in 1998, the idea was to provide internet for everyone. The government wanted to increase the penetration of internet in the country since umpteen number of studies have shown that an increase in internet penetration increases the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nation. This is evident from what we have seen in other countries.

While privatising internet, the government made the licensing policy easy. The government issued over 400 licences and more than 200 of them are still in operation. The stated goal was to garner a million subscribers in the next two years. The latest broadband policy envisages that by 2010, there will be 40 million internet users in India from the existing 5 million. Out of the 40 million users, half of them should be broadband internet users. However, even if we touch the 40 million subscriber mark by 2010, we would still be far behind countries like China which already has 100 million internet subscribers.

Will the new broadband policy propel the growth of internet?

The intention of the broadband policy is right but it has to be implemented in the right way. Internet is now primarily being used for e-mail and for browsing purposes. It is not impacting us otherwise in terms of e-governance and e-learning. Internet penetration will increase only if its benefit percolates down to the common man. The central government had sometime back announced that 2% to 3% of the state government’s budget should be reserved for IT initiatives.