Technology @ Knowledge Zone


Bandwidth as a Commodity: A Roadmap to the future

by ANJAN                                 
ZeeNetwork                                 

Previous page... Summary

Current Indian scenario:
As of today, a grim picture is being painted about the disparity between the bandwidth requirements and the availability thereof. According to some research findings, current domestic bandwidth demand is 4 Gbps, and the supply 420 Mbps; by 2003, demand will be for 24 Gbps with the supply being less than 2 Gbps; and in 2005, demand will be for 48.6 Gbps, while the supply would be a measly 4.5 Gbps.

By March next year, India would require a domestic bandwidth of 5.4 Gbps, but availability is unlikely to exceed 570 Mbps. By 2003, bandwidth poverty will touch 92%. Demand for bandwidth, meanwhile, will be fuelled by rising Net usage at home, falling access costs, relative improvements in access speeds and the increasing emergence of the convergence phenomenon wherein voice, data and video will converge onto a single medium through a single pipe. Net connections are expected to touch a million by March 2001, and cross 3.5 million by December 2002. The actual number of users will rise from the present 1.4 million to over 10 million by March 2003. The next few years are also expected to herald the advent of 'heavy' or bandwidth-intensive applications such as video-conferencing, video-on-demand, gaming and other such broadband activities.

There are several reasons attributed for this shortage in bandwidth. It is primarily due to slow additions to the international pipes owing to huge investments per Mbps, lack of foresight and slow pace in the easing legislation involving telephony and international connectivity. Besides, it is evident that India had not prepared itself for the Internet revolution, as it should have. The demand for bandwidth will be exponential in the future, as the Net will serve applications besides browsing or communications, which constitute around 60-80 per cent of Net usage today. Apart from the Net access, the necessity to meet traffic demands is becoming a growing challenge now more than ever before for reasons such as:

  • The splurge of overseas hosted content meant for local usage leading to increased outbound traffic choking international gateways.

  • Convergence in terms of integration of wireline and wireless technologies again for local consumption.

  • Applications like NVOD, true VOD, VOIP, conferencing and other broadband services that are expected in India more or less at the same time they appear elsewhere on a large scale.

Besides, there are business issues that will force ISPs to diversify into value-added services that are largely broadband intensive. As a survival strategy, a number of ISPs are expected to move towards value-added services supplementing their revenue models from advertising and content services. This would mean that Internet businesses would transcend from the services offered today at the entry level viz. Web hosting, remote management, Web authoring and content management which are not large cash cows, to the next stage of business development faster than it would under normal circumstances. These developments will have implications in terms of demand for bandwidth.

The per capita bandwidth squeeze in India stems from three basic constraints viz. access lines, weak PSTN-based national backbone, as well as bottleneck to international gateways. The structure for providing bandwidth and Internet access is also very cumbersome. ISPs are given direct overseas gateway access through VSNL only. VSNL provides the domestic backbone in addition to international links but restricted to six nodes viz. Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Pune and Bangalore. The department of telecom (DoT) manages all the other nodes, currently around 55 in number, in other major cities. The private ISPs are offered statewide and circle wide licenses that enable them to cover the lesser-populated cities with better services. While this ensures spread, management of the Internet infrastructure rests with different agencies.

Next page... Sufficient bandwidth?