Key notes: (L-R) R. Sukumar, Executive Editor, Business Today, Sudhir Narang, Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems and Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom, deliberate on issues facing broadband adoption in India at the BT Boardroom Breakfast

April 19, 2005, saw the bigwigs of Indian industry assemble at the Nilgiri Hall in the Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi, to participate in a discussion on "Broadband: The New Wave". Despite the 8.30 a.m. start to the seventh Business Today Boardroom Breakfast (organised in association with Cisco Systems India), the speakers-Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom and Sudhir Narang, Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems, and moderator R. Sukumar, Executive Editor, Business Today-and the audience had a stimulating enough time to dispel any regrets of sleep lost.

First off the mark was Karnik, who argued that although broadband is a technology with great potential, there were still things that needed to be done on the policy front, particularly with regard to last-mile connectivity. "We need to unbundle the last mile for broadband to actually take off. We need that badly to bring in competition so that costs and prices come down, and availability goes up," he said.

But last-mile connectivity was not the only thing on Karnik's agenda. In his view, the next, more critical issue was what was going to be carried on it. "Clearly, the driver is going to be and has to be applications. The crux of the cable penetration in India, for example, was the fact that there was compelling content. If you want broadband to penetrate widely, it has to be applications that drive it," he asserted.

Taking over from Karnik, Cisco's Narang felt that there had to be some corrections apart from the last mile. His primary concern was whether pc penetration could be brought up to the kind of volumes needed to nab 20 million broadband users and 40 million internet users. His recipe for broadband mania: "First, there has to be a converged platform; there has to be services and applications convergence. Also, there has to be a significant change in market approach, convergence on infrastructure and a different approach for different business models." Narang also felt that in future, voice, video and data on broadband would be media independent.

"For broadband mania to happen, there has to be services and applications convergence" Sudhir Narang Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems	"Broadband can liberate us from the concept of working in a physically bound location" Kiran Karnik President, NASSCOM

It wasn't just Karnik and Narang who aired their views; the audience also had its chance. Moderator Sukumar queried Manav Sethi, National Manager (Sales & Strategic Alliances), Webdunia, the first Indian ISP to offer vernacular services as far back as in 2000, on what was required to increase broadband penetration in rural areas. Sethi felt that broadband could be used as the medium for the rural populace to access applications that would be people-centric. "Many of these (applications) will have to be in local languages. We just can't do without (local) languages," he said.

Rajat Mukarji, VP (Corporate Affairs), Idea Cellular, commenting on the potential of wireless broadband, felt that wireless broadband in its current form would probably not be able to provide end-to-end connectivity, because of the dearth of handsets and the fact that the technology itself was not tried and tested. But he was hopeful of change. "In a year and a half, there will be technologies that will support wireless broadband and devices that will connect to wireless broadband. Applications and services then will drive usage in that area," he remarked.

Usage, of course, is largely driven by what customers are willing to pay for. N. Arjun, CEO (Long-distance Services), Airtel, held forth on the issue. "The customer now is increasingly paying for quality, and a lowering of rates should spur the market on. Quality and applications-though I don't see applications coming in the next 18 months-are what they are going to pay for," said Arjun.

Enraptured: The industry circuit finds lots to ponder and exchange notes over when the discussion revolves around broadband

A dampner came from Rohit Tandon, CIO of GE, who felt that there was no pressing need for companies to move away from their current infrastructure to broadband. "Unless we can figure out how you can make a quantum leap in the way you are doing business by moving to broadband, I don't see a huge demand from the corporate sector," remarked Tandon.

Karnik, though, had the last word: "One of the things that broadband can do is liberate the concept of working in a physically bound location." We all look forward to that day!