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Posts Tagged ‘BWA’

1.        What is broadband?

Broadband is the common term for a high bandwidth internet connection.  The current definition of broadband in India is ‘always on’ with the speed of more than 256 Kbps.  By this yardstick, India has around 9 million broadband customers.  In western countries like Finland the 1 Mbps is already available to 90% of the citizens and the government is planning to provide 100 mbps by 2013 to all its citizens.  TRAI has recommended raising the definition of broadband to 2 Mbps in India. If we consider 2 mbps speed the total broadband connections will come down to 200,000 subscribers.  The high cost of providing broadband connection through wire line, contributed to this slower growth. With the launch of 3G and BWA, the country is now poised to witness huge growth in broadband connections.  3G is promising 14 mbps speed and BWA could deliver 100 mpbs. The main driver for the growth of broadband will be applications like watching online video, using IP based telephony services, and downloading music files.

2.        History of Broadband in India

VSNL launched Internet services in August 1995 in India.  Till November 1998, VSNL was the monopoly provider of internet services in the country. The Government allowed provisioning of internet services by private operators in 1998 and the ISP licences were issued with liberal conditions. There was no licence fee and the policy allowed unlimited number of players who could install their own international gateways and decide their own tariff plans.

The Government of India announced the Broadband policy during 2005. Even though India continues to be one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world, the growth of Broadband is not very spectacular till now. There are around 180 operational ISPs in the country as on date but a very few players control the entire broadband market. It is estimated that 90% of the connections are with 10% of the ISP providers.

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