Announcements are being made that cable-delivered-internet access is going to be upon us very soon -- more precisely in a month's time if one is to believe government sources in Bangalore. Siticable says it is going to beat the rest of the cable operators in the business and be the first with internet access. How it will be able to offer a good enough service with its primitive infrastructure and high cost of cable modems and TV Internet devices, only its management knows.

There has been cheer for Internetters wannabes on another front: Computer prices have been falling. This has encouraged a spurt in the number of internet subscribers which has risen to close to 400,000 (or is it 450,000) as against below 200,000 hardly last year.The number of users in the country has well gone past the 1 million mark quite some time back thanks to cyber cafes and institutions, which give their employees internal e-mail.

On another front, you have had VSNL reacting to competition from private companies and flagging off 25-hour accounts. VSNL has also automatically upgraded all shell accounts to TCP/IP. (Quite a few shell account holders are cursing that they paid to upgrade to TCP/IP earlier. That too at a hefty price of Rs 10,000 for 500 hours as recently as last year. This writer surrendered some 83 hours of shell account time to the ISP. )

MTNL has announced that it will provide a telephone line free for new subscribers to its internet services, surely igniting the interest of those sitting on the internet fence, undecided whether they should take the leap into cyberspace or not. This move by MTNL will result in new subscribers saving Rs 3,000 in telephone line registration fees.

Internet buffs can also check their e-mail on mobile phones,apart from having their e-mails read out to them. Indian internet content has also started proliferating on the WWW though most of it is being hosted on servers situated in the US. Sadly, the quality of access service continues to be middling to poor to shoddy. This is one aspect that really needs sprucing up. Regulating service quality through ISP standards is obviously not the way to go, but something has to be done about this by the authorities. This writer stayed connected for hours and hours together on AOL in Paris and in New York, New Jersey. And mind you AOL's not the best of access service providers.

In India, disconnects are still frequent, dial-up access is difficult, leased lines are still too expensive excepting for the extremely deep pocket too afford.

Hopefully, by the time the next status report on the internet in India is written the access quality will rise to such standards so as to merit several decorative stars.

A farewell to Iridium?

A chapter in the chaotic history of themuch-toured but much stumbling Iridium project has ended with the resignation of its Indian chief Jaydev Raja. Raja resigned owing to personal reasons and he said that he would have put in his papers long ago had it not been for the fact that he saw in the Indian arm of the Iridium project quite a challenge.

Several professionals believe that Iridium will get a kick start without Raja. That will depend on who Iridium finds as a replacement.

Whatever be the case for Iridium to succeed in India, the company will have to take a stand to lower prices of handsets and also prices of calls. Otherwise instead of writing a farewell to Raja, industry writers will be penning an obit for the Iridium service in India.

(The writer is the editor of The Indian Cab&Sat Reporter. Feel free to e-mail with your comments to television@vsnl.com or television@hotmail.com)