Indian operators need to gear up with technological and infrastructural changes for the onslaught of broadband growth in India

Broadband has been one of the areas which has registered the most sluggish growth over the years. The country still lags behind with a 0.74% penetration of broadband, whereas it has a mobile teledensity of more than 52%. The government has been quite keen to increase the broadband access. Trai has been contemplating to frame the regulations for the same by the end of this year.

In a stark contrast to the mobile penetration, of around 18 mn mobile connections per month, the net broadband addition happens to be just 0.1 to 0.2 mn every month. The National Broadband Policy enunciated by the DoT in 2004 envisaged 20 mn broadband connections by the year 2010, but the present penetration seems nowhere near the number. As per the subscriber data made available by Trai, the total broadband subscriber base has increased from 9.77 mn in July 2010 to 10.08 mn in August 2010. A miniscule figure when compared to the overall population as well as the number of mobile phone users.

There are various technological and infrastructural changes that need to be done to address the country's need to become broadband enabled.

Hurdles

There are a plethora of challlenges that exist in bringing broadband revolution in the country.

The biggest challenge for broadband growth in India has been last mile access, ie, the high-speed connection required between the nearest broadband access Point-of-Presence (PoP) to the home. So far, wireless access technologies have been far more successful in connecting customers in India compared to wireline or fixed access technologies. This is evident from the rapid growth in the mobile phone market (650 mn + subscribers) compared to the wireline or fixed market (45 mn lines, and decreasing). For this reason, broadband wireless access technologies such as 3G, WiMax and LTE will play a critical role in the growth of broadband in India.

Today a large chunk (70% or more) of Internetbandwidth globally is consumed by peer-to-peer file sharing applications, used mainly for downloads of music, games and video content. As broadband becomes ubiquitous, this usage will only multiply. Technology that helps manage P2P traffic across the Internet has also become a critical aspect of providing quality customer experience, in turn driving broadband growth.

Anand Patil, VP, SP, Cisco, India & Saarc says, “India is a vast, diverse country with a large population that lives in semi-urban and rural areas. A lot of the telecom infrastructure traditionally exists only in the developed cities and towns in this country, therefore affordability and scalability are critical considerations for any technology that attempts to connect the population of India to the Information Super-highway.”

Another important technology in the broadband space is the ability of service providers to authenticate users and provide differentiated services and billing to their consumers. In this respect, subscriber authentication and control systems such as the Broadband Remote Access Server (B-RAS) and its wireless equivalent, the Packet Core Solution are key to providing services securely and profitably. This area also requires due attention.

Technology Beckons

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) has been the most popular broadband access technology in developed countries. This requires good-quality copper wiring between the nearest Point-of-Presence (much like a telephone exchange) and the home. Traditionally, this copper line is laid by the incumbent/government operator for telephone connections, and can be re-used by the broadband ISP for providing DSL services as well. This regulatory framework is known as 'copper unbundling'. In India, DSL is challenged due to the limited availability of good quality copper telephone wiring (compared to the total population), as well as the lack of a copper-unbundling policy. Laying of new copper wire infrastructure to carry DSL signals is an extremely expensive proposition, and therefore is not a very popular practice. That said, DSL still has the largest marketshare (about 7.93 mn lines) of current broadband connections in India. It is offered by operators like BSNL/MTNL, Bharti-Airtel, Tata Indicom and others.

Another equally popular technology for broadband access in developed countries is Cable. This comprises the delivery of broadband signal on existing cable TV connections in the home. Currently there are 85 mn homes in India that have a cable connection, hence this technology obviously has a lot of potential. However the pre-requisite is that existing one-way, analog cable TV infrastructure has to be upgrade to a two-way system, which costs approximately `800-1,000 per subscriber. Cable broadband is being offered in limited service areas in India by operators like Hathway.

Says Patil, “Given the lack of prevalent wireline infrastructure, wireless technologies hold a lot of promise in being able to drive broadband adoption in India. They have lower cost per subscriber compared to wireline technologies, and are also faster to rollout. Satellite is a wireless technology with ubiquitous access. However, it is costly and availability of transponders for high-speed data transmission is limited.”

The recent spectrum auctions for 3G and BWA have opened up a new market for service providers that want to provide broadband services. The explosion in mobile phone services and their ability to transform lives through connectivity is being used as an example of how wireless technologies will be able to bring about a new vision of a connected India. In this space, 3G, WiMax and LTE access technologies hold the largest promise. A host of operators have bid for and won 3G and BWA spectrum and have announced plans to launch these services in the near future. For example, Tata DoCoMo has already announced the launch of its 3G service during Diwali this year.

Moving On

The Internet is moving to the Web 2.0 age. Initially, email and text-based information was the most prevalent uses of the Internet. HTML-based browsers like Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer brought about a new 'browsing' experience that was based on a combination of text, pictures and links. The content was generated primarily by the 'hoster' and made available to end users. The traffic flow was mostly from the 'server' to the end user.
Currently, the Internet is a rich, multi-media experience. Anyone can generate content and upload it for viewing by friends, family and the entire world. In that way, traffic patterns on the Internet have become increasingly meshed, and multi-directional.

Time to take a Call

There have been a lot of regulatory and policy issues pertaining to broadband. A lot of recommendations have been made for the National Broadband plan. Governmental support is one thing that experts have unanimously agreed on. Says Song Shijie, marketing director of fixed network at ZTE, “Introduce government promotions to increase awareness of the potential value of using broadband.”

He also suggests that Increasing PC and mobile terminal literacy rates should be focused on. Lot of ways like education, society activities, etc, can be used to accelerate the same. According to IAMAI I-Cube 2009-2010, total PC literate population is 95 mn (September 2009), accounting for 11.6% of total population (age>12) and 35% of total urban population(age>12). The lower PC literacy rate limits people's demand of broadband.

Udit Mehrotra, director, Spectranet says, “Funding support from the USO fund can help immensely in the rollout of rural broadband.” Also, liberalization of VoIP licensing allowing ITSPs to offer basic services, liberalization of technology/hardware import norms can help to cope up with the challenges arising from lower broadband penetration.

If the government is responsible, then operators should equally co-operate to unleash a new wave of broadband services. Suggests Mehrotra, “From Infrastructure sharing to creating broadband relevant content, all can be important ingredients in creating a new approach for broadband proliferation.”

Mandating unbundling of local loop; functional separation of underlying infrastructure for service provision; open access to the backhaul networks; creation of national broadband backbone by PPP or USO funding can be the ways to grow just as wireless services have grown in the country, according to Satya N Gupta, president, Association of Competitive Telecom Operators.

YL Agarwal, director, HFCL says, “A close co-ordination and determination among the government, entrepreneurs and service providers can accelerate the growth of broadband services. There are sufficient funds available in the USO kitty and, as a ballpark figure, in about `15,000 crore the entire India can be wired to provide broadband services in a three-year timeframe.”

To make broadband affordable, the cost of setting up a network should also be made low. Suggests Agarwal, state electricity boards should be roped in and their LT (11KV) transmission lines should be made available at nominal costs to the service providers. Also the network should be set up on a Public Private Partnership basis.

The tariff should be based on the basis of bytes downloaded every month/quarter voice (VOIP), video, and data (triple play). It can be said with certain degree of confidence that cable TV business along with several other interesting services will provide sustainability to the entrepreneurs and service providers of broadband services.

Given the diversity of Indian market, government should intervene to make apt changes to suit the user paradigm of the country.

Architectural Imperatives

The above trends have also given rise to many architectural imperatives from a technology point-of-view. Like ubiquitous access, based on Internet Technology. With the IP (Internet Protocol) becoming the technology of choice to transport multiple services-be it data, voice or video end-to-end from the subscriber to the network. 3G, WiMax and LTE are radio interface technologies based on IP Access. The transport layer from the Base Station back to the core network is also fast transitioning to IP from the traditional TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) for efficiency and scalability.

Distributed data center and cloud computing is another call of the day. Explains Patil, “Because of the shift in traffic patterns from unidirectional to multidirectional, it is imperative for the operator to build storage and hosting capacity where he can house all the content and run his services from. In order to deliver content efficiently, the source of the content needs to be as close as possible to the end user. This gives rise to the need for distributed data centers, and eventually, cloud computing as an important component of the mobile Internet architecture.”

In order to offer differentiated services and provide tiered billing for subscribers, the operator will need to implement intelligent subscriber and services control into his infrastructure. This component of the architecture provides user and device authentication, and is able to control the services available to the user. The ability to identify the identity, device and location of the user are important criteria to have efficient delivery of content and services formatted for the screen and localized to the geography.

Experts, analysts, industry veterans all agree that there is a vast opportunity in the Indian market. With some right regulations and perspectives by the service providers combined with the right technology, the country can be spurred to another digital revolution.

Archana Singh
archanasi@cybermedia.co.in