Tags: Airtel, Broadband in India, BSNL, MTNL, Reliance, Sify Broadband, Tata

Winds of change in the Broadband Industry

In what is an encouraging trend though not in India, is that group of people want to set up a cooperative and roll out Broadband themselves. This would happen in Nashville, Tenn., USA. Well, sick and tired of telcos not offering their services, a group of people has decided to get together and install the infrastructure themselves. This means end of the monopoly; publicly owned infrastructure makes much more sense; community decisions are far more important than a file pushing clerk sitting and doing this job- decisions taken that are far away from the reality.

It is a common story across US that private companies are up in arms against the local municipalities (Muni’s as they are called). Their argument is that private initiatives in setting up broadband are status quo and no one can challenge that. To buttress their arguments, they have set up a forum called as WiMax Coop that would “be a mechanism through which urban consumers can band together and purchase broadband and related services and avoid the need for direct government involvement and Telco lawsuits that may result.”

Let us hope the best for them. I am not overtly enthused by private initiatives that seek to become monopolies. Speaking of that, VSNL is going to be hardest hit in the coming months. Prior to being sold off, VSNL and BSNL were two ugly sisters of Indian Telecom, while Department of Telecom sought to spoil everyone’s party big time. It is indeed a miracle that upstarts survived in the business. VSNL was the preferred international long distance (ILD) carrier for BSNL, when BSNL realized that they could extract better benefit by reducing rates. Inviting fresh bids for the same, BSNL kicked out VSNL and the party went sour.

In all the hoopla, someone high up in BSNL realized that they can achieve their economies of scale by owning their own networks. Is Tata listening? Hopefully the upcoming project would be launched in the near future with BSNL planning to set up its own international gateways and undersea link from Port Blair to Singapore. I believe that this would make Internet cheaper (remember, they are the only long-term serious players in Broadband market). Future holds the key.

While in the same period, ILD calls would become cheaper by another 30-50% over the period of time. It would because of the pressures of VoIP, which would take off big time as and when Broadband access becomes “universal”. Wait and watch as to how these companies survive the blood bath. Good for us.

Discuss on: Sify Broadband, Tata Indicom, Airtel Broadband, Reliance Broadband, MTNL - BSNL Broadband, Dial Up, Others

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.