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The Government of India is proposing to offer all Indian Citizens, a nationwide free broadband service and it plans to implement this high speed broadband connectivity by the year 2009. The good part is it has the financial capability to implement such a measure. Unknown is if it has the technological capability.

The Government according to Union Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran has set a target of 9 million broadband subscribers by the end of this year of which 7 million are expected to come from the State owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited. According to the Telecom Minister

Key Points:

1. Broadband connections in India posted a growth of 70% to touch 2.3 million at the end of March as compared to 1.35 million last year. Broadband subscribers were 2.21 million in February’07 to 2.30 million by March’07 thus adding 0.09 million new subscribers in the month of March

2. The government plans to achieve free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2MB per second across the country

3. The idea is to boost economic activity in general

4. Project can be financed by spending only a portion of the burgeoning corpus of the Universal Service Obligation Fund

5. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business handling the broadband sector in India.

We in the United States have seen such offers of free high speed broadband being offfered by a lot of cities. Many Municipal corporations across the United States have in general complained about the lack of affordable and reliable broadband options for their citizes. When there was a lack of a major initiative coming out of Washington, these cities have taken matters into their own hands. These cities in the US have blanketed themselves with wireless broadband connectivity and offering this to the city residents for free. Many cities, concerned about their ability to respond to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, also hope to beef up their sometimes unreliable emergency communications systems using Wi-Fi technology.

The last blockbuster news involving such free municipal Wi-Fi involved Google offering to to blanket San Francisco with free wireless Internet access at no cost to the city. Besides S.F other major U.S cities planning or rolling out free municipal Wi-Fi networks include Chicago, Denver and Miami Beach. Portland, Oregon. A number of smaller and mid-sized cities (where wired broadband access can be spotty) are also looking in providing such services.

How will the Govt. of India finance the free nationwide broadband service?

The Govt. of India has something called the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). All telecom operators in India contribute 5% of their revenues every year to the USO Fund. According to reports, this amount has touched around Indian Rupees 9,194.12 crore or around 2.265 Billion US dollars. The Govt of India estimates that using only a portion of this funds would allow them to make the concept of a free nationwide broadband, a reality.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) in India would be taking a series of steps to make this proposal a reality. Using funds from the USOF, the Dept. plans to set an extensive optic cable network across the country, opening up the long-distance sectors to further competition, allowing free and fair access to cable landing stations, permitting the resale of bandwidth, setting up web hosting facilities within the country and asking all internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).

The ground work for this huge project has already started. This comes as the telecom regulator in India, TRAI had recently proposed that access to submarine cables be made cost-based and independent companies be given free and fair access to cable landing stations. (Cable landing stations connect submarine telecom cables with data and voice networks in the country.) Additionally, TRAI had also recommended that bandwidth resale be permitted in India. Industry analysts estimate that these two steps by TRAI alone will lead to a 30% reduction in bandwidth costs, when implemented.

In a related move, the DoT, India will also issue norms which mandate Indian companies, including state-owned BSNL and MTNL to begin large scale web hosting services.  According to the Telecom Minister of India

“This is because, most of the internet traffic generated in India is currently routed out of the country and re-routed back, resulting in the increased use of international bandwidth. Once traffic starts terminating within the country, the concept of free broadband, allowing for unlimited downloads without paying a charge, could be possible” , the minister added 

Source: Economic Times, India

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