Technology: Pipe-Dreams?

There's no such thing as too much bandwidth. A slew of companies is in the process of building broadband networks that will radically change the way we view communication, entertainment, and computing.

It's every cyber-geek's vision of saturnalia: fat pipes that can pipe a healthy stream of voice, data, and multimedia content. Picture yourself in a world where downloads happen instantaneously, pages appear and disappear in a flash at the click of the ubiquitous rodent, and the small browser logo on the corner of your screen rotates with the intensity of a possessed gyroscope. Picture yourself in a world where a mouse is more than a mouse; it is a Ferrari. This, for those who came in late, is what broadband is all about. And everyone-petrochem major Reliance, oil and gas heavyweight Enron, telecom services provider, consumer-durables maker and Internet service provider BPL, utilities PowerGrid Corporation of India and GAIL, cable operators Siticable and Incable, and even the Railways-wants a piece of the action. The logic behind the sudden emergence of several broadband players isn't hard to find. Access rules; corporate customers need more bandwidth; the government is in the process of opening up the domestic long-distance telephony market; and content on the Net is getting fatter by the minute. Avers Biren Ghosh, 42, CEO, UTV Interactive: ''Carrying data and multimedia applications over telephone lines isn't a viable proposition even in the short-term. There is a very definite market for broadband services.''

Prime-movers in Broadband Technology

Set-Top Boxes: With an in-built cable modem that facilitates faster Net access, set-top boxes can use existing co-axial cable networks to pipe broadband into homes. Bangalore-based technology company--innomedia--manufactures a set-top box called CHOISpad, and has been running a pilot project on cable-enabled Net access for the last three years in Bangalore. Satyam HFCL are also involved in similar initiatives

Server & Routers: SGI's servers can handle the high-volume data and application streams that broadband will generate. And Cisco is working on integrating optical-transmission technology with its data-switching and routing platforms.

DSL & ADSL: Lucent offers Direct Subscriber Link (DSL) equipment and ATM switches, while Alcatel provides DSL and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Link (ADSL) technologies.

VSATs: HCL Comnet, through its some 800 VSATs, has been providing corporate customers with Net and other-network access in areas where DoT still not established a Net point-of-presence. S. Kumar has also embarked on a venture to provide VSAT services.

Put simply, any medium, technology, or network that enables data-transfer speeds higher than the 64 KBPS an analogue telephone line allows, qualifies as broadband. That includes the ISDN (128 KBPS), the leased line (64 KBPS to 2 MBPS), microwave (up to 2 MBPS), the cable modem (27 MBPS), DSL(64 KBPS to 6 MBPS), and VSATs (up to 40 MBPS). Technologies associated with ISDN, the cable modem, and DSL involve the use of equipment at either end of the network (or both ends) to upgrade existing telephone or cable wires to higher bandwidths. The leased-line approach, in contrast, uses optic-fibre cable (OFC) instead of co-axial cable. The second seems to be the preferred approach in India: Power Grid, BSEs, and the Railways are elevating their existing networks to OFC; Reliance, Punj Lloyd, and Enron are building new ones; and Siticable and Hathaway are juxtaposing their existing co-axial cable networks with OFC ones.

Already Net-on-cable experiments, courtesy broadband, have begun in Mumbai and Delhi. The metros, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Pune are being broadbanded by one company or another. And the Reliance-Worldcom combine is in the process of fibring the insides of the southern states.

Some old-e companies and utilities dare dream of electric sheep. The Railways has a communication network (rudimentary in parts) which it proposes to convert into an OFC pipeline that will link the four metros, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, and Ahmedabad in the first phase, and the remainder of the network at a later stage. Boasts A.A. Zaidi, 59, Additional Member, Telecom, Railway Board: ''We've already started receiving enquiries from cellular operators, ISPs, and companies.''

That the Railways should offer broadband services is, perhaps, only apt. Russell Dagatt, the CTO of satellite-bandwidth provider Teledesic once described broadband as the digital age equivalent of the industrial age's railway revolution. And the department boasts a not-unimpressive network: overhead lines covering 43,000 km, underground copper cables that cover nearly 15,000 km, and OFC covering 2,670 km. Also piggy-backing on the back of its existing system of networks is PowerGrid Corporation of India (the Grid).

The impetus for the Grid's broadband initiative comes from the opportunity held out by long-distance. Says R.P. Singh, 52, Chairman and Managing Director, PowerGrid: ''We are waiting for dot and TRAI to announce the (long-distance) policy. Meanwhile, we have invited companies to form a joint venture to facilitate the creation of a NLDO (National Long-Distance Operator) by December, 2000.'' The Grid's plans? A 15,000-km OFC network linking the country's 35 largest cities (investment requirements: Rs 1,000 crore) in phase one.

The incremental cost of upgrading existing networks to OFC ones makes sense for the Grid and Railways which will not be bothered by 'right-of-way' issues that are likely to pose a hurdle for any company attempting to build a network from scratch. There are other utilities that propose to use their existing networks to pipe broadband too.

Mumbai-based power distribution utility BSEs, for which Reliance Industries has made a bid, is a case in point. BSEs Telecom (a subsidiary of BSES) plans to wire up Mumbai with a 1,200 km OFC network. Having realised that building an OFC network on top of a power distribution one is cost-efficient, BSEs Telecom has decided to piggyback on its parent. Explains K.H. Mankad, 57, Director, BSEs: ''Wherever BSEs gets distribution rights, it'll also provide Net access.'' Another case in point is the Tata Group, which plans to build an OFC grid along the 1,400-km power distribution network it operates in Mumbai.

And power and gas major Enron has forged an alliance with local utility Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) and Global Telesystems to build a 5,000-km long OFC network across Maharashtra. Says Wade Cline, 37, coo, Enron India: ''The move to broadband is a logical business extension for a company like Enron. We are in the infrastructure business, be it power, gas, or bandwidth.''

The difficulty associated with becoming a broadband player from scratch, though, hasn't stopped a rash of corporates from trying to do so. Over the next 24 months, Reliance Industries proposes to create an OFC broadband network that will cover 115 cities. And Enron has drafted a blueprint for an initiative titled the Enron Intelligent Network (EIN), which envisages the creation of a 4,500-km broadband network across Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Also hopping onto the broadband bandwagon are companies engaged in the business of private and cellular telephony. Thus, Hughes Telecom (the basic telephony service provider in Maharashtra and Goa), Fascel (the cellular service provider in Gujarat), Airtel (the basic telephony service provider in Madhya Pradesh, and the cellular service provider in Delhi, Chennai, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh), and BPL Innovision (part of the same group that provides cellular telephony services in Mumbai) have significant broadband initiatives lined up.

At one level, convergence will force companies in either of the access (telephony or Net) businesses to try and offer both. At another, a TELCO providing telephony services across contiguous states or regions can, if it has a broadband back-end of its own, reduce operating costs significantly (more so, since it can also offer domestic long-distance telephony services). Agrees Virat Bhatia, 32, Managing Director, International Policy Affairs, AT&T India: ''As telecom and infotech networks converge, we are likely to see more telecom companies setting up broadband backbones.''

If TELCOs are tapping into broadband from one end of the spectrum, then ISPs and cable networks are doing so from the other. Satyam Infoway and RPG Netcom have forged an alliance that will stream broadband into households in Calcutta. And Spectranet, a Class A (read: national level) ISP, has decided to pump in nearly Rs 2,000 crore in a broadband network that will cover Delhi and its environs. Hathaway Cable and the Zee Group's Siticable (which covers approximately five million households spread across 43 cities) have broadband plans of their own. Siticable envisages an investment of around Rs 2,400 crore over the next two years in fibring the cable head-end to cable operator segment of the network. Says Dev Naganand, 50, CEO (Portal & Convergence), Zee Group: ''Our broadband plans are built around Siticable's existing cable network, and the group's strengths in content development.''

A typical broadband carrier can operate at three levels: as a supplier of bandwidth to other carriers; as a bandwidth retailer; or both. However, as several first world countries have discovered, bandwidth is a commodity. Ergo, it is only from content and applications that broadband carriers can hope to make their money. Agrees Pran Mehra, 29, CEO, band-x India, an on-line bandwidth exchange: ''Over time, bandwidth costs will necessarily decline. Unless carriers have revenue-sharing agreements with content providers and application service providers (asps), they're doomed.'' Seconds Uday Punj, 38, CEO, Spectranet: ''We are planning to provide services like tele-medicine, tele-education, Net radio, video streaming, interactive games, video-on-demand, and application hosting services like rent-an-ERP.''

Content providers will only be too glad to share their revenues with carriers, since they depend badly on bandwidth. Says Sukaran Singh, 30, CEO, Broadcast India.com: ''People in India cannot view our site in its entirety as they do not have access to high-bandwidth networks.'' However, access will continue to be the primary income source till revenue-sharing agreements create other streams. Still, a recent study by Arthur Andersen estimates the size of the broadband market in India at $4 billion.

Despite what it looks like now, broadband, like the Net, will end up being more relevant in the b2b scene than in the b2c one. Interestingly, carriers are likely to find that the bulk of their business stems from carrying data, not voice or streaming video. Caveat: to be efficient in terms of cost, quality, and delivery-speeds, broadband carriers need to have gateways of their own linked to submarine cables (satellites are too expensive and not suited to mission-critical applications). With the submarine-end immersed in a deep controversy (See Waiting For The Big Flag-Off, BT, July 7-21, 2000), India Inc.'s broadband dreams could come to an end, courtesy, some narrow-minded policy-making.