Last
month we organized a panel discussion in Delhi. The topic was
"Bandwidth: Is it really scarce or just a management
issue?" The objective was to find out what bandwidth issues
are enterprises facing; do they have bandwidth policies or not,
and how are they managing the bandwidth they have. We could not,
at the end of the discussion, conclude whether bandwidth was
actually scarce or the CIO and MIS heads were not effectively
managing it. It did turn out though that bandwidth management
was as important an issue as bandwidth availability. And all the
panelists seemed to agree that bandwidth was hugely scarce in
India. Maybe, bandwidth management would be an issue only after
it was available.
To our surprise we were
enlightened with more critical issues than what we had hoped.
Some companies in Singapore offer 160 Mbps of bandwidth–same
as what India as a country offers for external connectivity. The
dream of achieving $50 billion worth software exports by 2008
will not materialize if bandwidth availability remains at its
current level. India can be the base for the world’s largest
Internet Export Zones if it gets enough bandwidth. Also in
future, one of the key economic indicators will be per capita
bandwidth consumption.
Clearly, bandwidth will
not just decide the fate of dotcom outfits and IT plans of
small, medium, and large enterprises, but will also make or
break entire industries, economies, and nations. We were told,
to our dismay, that the NTP’99, which runs into several pages,
does not mention the word "bandwidth" even once.
If so much of our dreams
rest on bandwidth, and we have so less of it and are yet quite
relaxed, is not the situation grave? The panel members rightly
blamed the Government and the DoT, which traditionally has been
the torchbearer for telecom infrastructure development in India.
The Government must immediately get into action by doing two
things–give up its monopolistic attitude and encouraging
private participation wherever it cannot help. However, while
most of the panel members went all out for DoT bashing, none of
the participants seemed to have an alternate proposal to build
bandwidth for the country. Maybe even the industry itself needs
to get more organized and focussed.
A forum for the cause of
building bandwidth should be set up immediately. Since bandwidth
is an infrastructure issue, other industry associations like
NASSCOM and FICCI should also be involved. It’s time that the
bandwidth creators, who claim also to be wealth creators, come
up with some solid proposals, which will be bought not only by
the Government but even by international agencies involved in
bandwidth building.