Not only is the proliferation and broadbasing of the internet dependent on a number of key issues, private internet service providers in the country also feel the pinch of the rapid changes in the Net-usage pattern of subscribers.

Expressing this views at a concluding session of the India Internet World, VSNL director (operations) Amitabh Kumar said that there was a remarkable shift among users from using simple chat, surfing websites and e-mail to multimedia applications in the past three to four months.

"Indian users are increasingly downloading large MP3 music clips, video clips and voice using e-mail and this has grown by 400 per cent in the last quarter," he said.

Kumar said that with the changes in trend, private ISPs would have to necessarily expand their bandwidths substantially in the near future in order to cope with increased demand. "The increase per customer will be by a factor of 10," he said, adding that private ISPs would feel the pinch due to this trend.

Stating that e-commerce had not yet taken off fully in the country, Kumar said that companies will have to prepare for the future as the character of the internet was evolving in diverse manners.

Kumar announced that VSNL had decided to increase its bandwidth capacity from from 161 mbps to 530 mbps in the next three months, as result of the pressure regarding bandwidth capacity. He added that there was an urgent need to make changes to the satellite usage policy as it was restrictive.

Other corporate chiefs present at the session raised a number of points in the course of their talk. Shashi Ullal of Hughes Escorts Communication Ltd said that the new telecom policy needed to be improved on. He added that the spread of the internet was based on the telephone penetration levels.

N Arjun of Bharti BT said that the internet was over hyped and under valued at this stage, but felt that Indian companies were rapidly realising the value of the internet.

He said that the main impediments were the telecom infrastructure, the lack of defined quality of service (QoS), delays in the introduction of cyber laws and the lack of localised domestic content. Arjun said that the growth of the internet depends heavily on the successful and fast resolution of these bottlenecks.

Anand Talwar of Wipro Net said that the development of an Indian internet exchange was crucial for the overall market size to increase. He said that besides infrastructure problems, Indian corporates also needed to face up to the challenge of the internet.

Talwar also called for the removal of the ban on internet telephony and said that the man-made impediments need to be removed.

Sharat Jain of Teleglobe Inc said that the real demand for bandwidth would be in the range of 1 Gb as against the currently available 200 mbps. He said that the new gateway policy still had a few stumbling points as it made it mandatory for private ISPs to approach the Department of Telecom for bandwidth allocation.

"Government controlling bandwidth is wrong and will lead to capacity constraints" he added. Jain added that there was a need to delicense the receiving options on cable systems. Currently, VSNL has the sole landing rights on cables into India.

Jason Ma of iPass Inc said that global internet roaming and remote access were the main growth drivers of the internet. However, the low frequency of mobile computing in India would prove to be an impediment, he said.

Sarma Vidula of Lucent Bell Labs said that private ISPs will have to build their networks keeping in mind the convergence of voice, data and video." ISPs will have to become full service providers and plan their backbones accordingly.