Bandwidth Options: Present & Future

On 18 March 2000, In TechNet established its own Internetgateway at Hyderabad. It was a landmark event as it not only ended VSNL’smonopoly on international bandwidth, but also made In TechNet the first ISP tolaunch its services on its own bandwidth leased from SingTel. According to MSomeswara Rao, senior manager, In TechNet Ltd, it resorted to the step becauseit was not sure about the reliability of VSNL bandwidth. Mantra Online was thefirst to set up a Ku-band gateway by leasing transponder space on Panamsat’sPAS-4 satellite. As of today, many ISPs have either set up their own gateways orplan to do so in the near future. Such is the need of the hour for bandwidthhungry applications today.

Thehectic activity on the gateway front is an indication that India will require ahuge amount of bandwidth in the times to come. "Project Bandwidth" ofNASSCOM predicts a phenomenal growth in bandwidth requirement of the country: 10GB by 2000; 100 GB by 2002; 300 GB by 2005; 500 GB by 2010.

Till recently, the VSNL was the sole bandwidth provider toISPs in the country. And the problem was so acute that VSNL was unable toguarantee even 50 percent of the actual bandwidth taken by it. Presently, thetotal international bandwidth available through VSNL gateway is 325 Mbps. Whileon the national trunk routes and on a few other routes it is restricted to 34Mbps, in most of the routes it is less than 8 Mbps. To enhance local bandwidthin the country, many players in the basic, cellular, and broadband services,among others are chalking out ambitious plans.

The New Guidelines

The recent government guidelines allowing submarine cablelanding stations in India have given impetus to international bandwidthcapacity. For national security considerations, certain areas like Punjab,J&K, north eastern states, border areas of Rajasthan, Andaman & NicobarIslands, and coastal areas of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu (excluding Chennai) havebeen kept outside the permitted areas. This might cause some inconvenience tothe ISPs operating in these areas and they will have to take costly leased-linesfrom the nearest landing points. Yet another clause in the guidelines will be ahindrance. If the ISP’s Point of Presence (PoP) and the landing station arenot co-located, the transmission link between the two will be through licensedbasic service operators, Railways, State Electricity Boards, National Power GridCorp., or any other operator authorized to lease such links to ISPs. But theseorganizations are still in the process of setting up or expanding theirnetworks.

Now is the opportunity for private ISPs like Bharti, Caltiger,Dishnet, and Global Electronic Commerce to have their own landing stations wherethey can facilitate landing of submarine cables like FLAG and Oxygen, or laytheir own submarine cable links to other landing facilities elsewhere.Currently, the total international bandwidth available through cable is 10 GBfrom FLAG and 20 GB from SEA-ME-WE-3. Any ISP can tap these resources. One canalso take capacity from Gulf Cable and IOCOM cables. Exatt Communications PvtLtd is planning to set up landing stations in Hyderabad and Bangalore by buyingfibre from FLAG by paying royalty to VSNL. The company has taken a bandwidth of34 Mbps.

On the optical fibre front, Dishnet DSL, Bharti, and Caltigerplan to lay undersea cables. Dishnet DSL Ltd is planning to lay a high-bandwidthsubmarine cable connecting Singapore with Chennai that would offer a totalbandwidth of 2.5 Tbps and would be ready for use by August 2001. The companyplans to invest Rs 9 billion for the project. The Bharti Group has tied up withSingTel to lay undersea cable from Chennai to Singapore and there areindications that it will start operations in the third quarter of 2001. Caltigeris planning to lay 3,000 kms of submarine optical fibre cable around the Deccanpeninsula connecting Calcutta and Mumbai.

So far so good, but there are many obstacles to be crossed before the ISPsstart providing assured level of bandwidth to the corporates. In the present setup one cannot apply for more than 2/8 Mbps (i.e., 2 Mbps on the uplink and 8Mbps on the downlink). If an ISP needs multiples of these capacities he has toapply separately for these, thereby delaying the whole process. According toindustry sources, the equipment at ISRO cannot monitor more than this capacity,thereby creating an artificial roadblock for procuring bandwidth. The Governmentis planning to upgrade it in 3-4 months. Till then the ISPs will have to livewith the grim reality.