Cyber Dhabas, Generation Next!

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Katwaria Sarai, a small locality in New
Delhi near IIT Delhi campus, today has about 35 PCO booths. So what! But it suggests a
growing trend. About 30 of those PCOs have come up in the last two years. And every street
of about 20 houses at least has two booths for STD, ISD, and local calls. Visit any of
these today, one can find small pamphlets reading messages—Internet coming soon.
E-mail available at Rs 5 per page ... such announcements without actually having access.
And even without knowing what to do to get Internet access and charge customers. Take
another instance, in an election campaign for

face="Arial" COLOR="#ffffff" size="4">Global Systems Integration (SI) Market SIZE="5" COLOR="#ffffff">

The SI market will grow at a
compound annual rate of nearly 18 percent to reach $162 billion by the year 2000,
according alt="https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/vnd/media/post_attachments/b6195e04af751df7f2304469f548a2ea4e146bbe7bb8d0a4c0f0b325f9f81718.gif (7724 bytes)" align="right" hspace="6" vspace="6"> SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000"> to a recent study by US-based leading IT market research firm,
the Yankee Group (www.yankeegroup.com). Certain segments of the market will grow between
20 and 30 percent annually, says the Boston-based firm. SI firms generated nearly $100
billion in revenues in 1997.

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the 25 November assembly polls in Delhi,
Rajendar Gupta, who was the transport minister during the Sahib Singh ministry, promises
voters of his constituency, Malviya Nagar, that if elected he would develop Internet
kiosks in his constituency. Wow! Clearly the mood for providing Internet facility is
irresistible. It is just a matter of who will set the ball rolling.

If those are the efforts by individuals,
companies too are canoeing the idea of cyber kiosks. MTNL, which was one among the first
companies to get the ISP licence on 7 November, has recently introduced such a concept in
Mumbai for providing Internet services in suburbs and other places in the city where
Internet services are not available at affordable rates. Called "Cyber Dhaba",
this service was started during the last week of October and is now available in five
customer service centres. The charges are Rs 90 for one hour, Rs 50 for 30 minutes, and Rs
30 for 15 minutes. Is this the "right choice"? Well, it is the beginning of the
choice of the "next generation".