Broadband as a booster to a country?s economy has been recognised the world over. The US, which had lagged behind in this arena, has taken up its broadband programme on a war footing. Australia, too, has embarked upon a government funded $31-billion programme for the creation of a broadband network.
So let us carry out a reality check on where we are and what are we doing on the broadband front. The government came out with a Broadband Policy in 2004, envisaging 9 million broadband connections by 2007 and 20 million by 2010. We currently have a little over 6 million connections. Abject failure by any reckoning! Let us examine what went wrong.
In the first place, the policy has a huge defect in terms of lack of clarity of action. After stating the projected growth, it lists the alternative technologies without bringing out what action should be taken. For example, the possibility of sharing of copper cable-based access network of PSUs by private competitors (technically referred to as Local Loop Unbundling) listed by Trai in its recommendation to DoT, has not been paid any attention, despite slow rate of provisioning by PSUs due to limitations of equipment procurement procedures of public sector units. The policy states that wireless technologies should be utilised but no time frame for making the spectrum available to operators had been outlined. We are still awaiting actual auctions.
Another popular technology is coaxial cable of the cable TV network through triple play services. This has not been a success in India despite a huge cable TV subscriber base because for triple play a UASL licence is needed, which is rather expensive for the highly fragmented cable TV industry. With this in view, Trai had suggested a licence without spectrum that would incentivise cable TV providers to go for upgrading their physical infrastructure suitable for broadband connections. Nothing much has been heard on this recommendation since then.
The Broadband Policy identified that network bandwidth is another key to the success of broadband initiative. In several countries governments have spent money (such as South Korea?the worldwide leader in broadband) or have initiated such programmes (for example, Australia). India has over 7,50,000 route-km of optical fibre cables but no action has been taken to optimise the usage through incentivised sharing for broadband core and backhaul network creation.
The policy also talked of the need for making broadband services affordable and that the DoT will work out a financial package with the ministry of finance to ensure the same. The rates of broadband services have fallen but are still not at a level that could trigger the kind of demand envisaged in the plan. There is not even a mention of any financial package right now.
One aspect on which the Broadband Policy is clear is the definition of broadband, namely ?an ?always-on? data connection with a minimum download speed of 256 kbps?. This definition is used most commonly worldwide (for example in OECD countries) to assess broadband penetration, though in several countries higher bandwidth is available. Recently in an industry forum, a suggestion has been made that the broadband definition be revised to a minimum of 2 mbps. Let us examine whether this suggestion will lead to greater clarity in broadband roadmap or will it lead to further confusion.
There is no denying the fact that higher the bandwidth greater is the ease with which data downloads can occur and, therefore, greater is the possibility of value addition. However, there are several considerations in seeking to provide higher minimum bandwidth. There are several access technologies such as ADSL 2+ on cable, WCDMA and HSPA, EVDO, WiMax etc, which are available to cater to 2 mbps access requirement. The real issue is when the demand of various users is aggregated, can the core and backhaul networks handle the requirement? For example, if we are targeting 20 million broadband connections each at minimum 2 mbps, then with 5% simultaneous use the carriage bandwidth needed in the core network will be 2 terabits per second. Surely, a lot of time, effort and money will be needed to achieve this. Huge international bandwidth will also be required.
Let us view the suggestion from another angle. Do all customers require 2 mbps access bandwidth? High-speed Internet access for email and browsing is very satisfactorily performed at 256 kbps speeds. It is equally suitable for most other commonly required applications such as video conferencing, e-governance, e-medicine, e-education etc. However, watching a high quality 20-30 minute live entertainment programme requires downloading up to 200 Mbytes data. This will need a bandwidth of 1.33 mbps.
Thus, other than for watching live high-quality programmes, 256 kbps bandwidth is quite adequate. The broadband definition gives a minimum limit only and since most technologies permit higher access bandwidth, the suggestion to increase this minimum limit has little meaning. What is more important is the strengthening and sharing of the backhaul and core networks. Suggestions of raising the minimum bandwidth in the broadband definition only makes country?s broadband roadmap murkier.
Further, as reported often, if the consumers find the current tariffs of 256 kbps connection too steep, will a costlier 2 mbps connection help increase the popularity of broadband to meet the economy?s demands?
The author is a former member of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India