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Wanted Torchbearers

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

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.

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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.

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