Believe In The Net

Consumer durables and telecom services major BPL's new e-foray (bplnet).

Pooja Garg

'What happens to other ISPs?' proclaims the screen. What follows is a knock-out match. I'm at the launch of bplnet--the BPL Group's ISP--in Delhi. Great effects. But the future is as nebulous as the smoke that blows on the stage.

Bplnet is the new ISP in cyber town. Already launched in six cities--Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, Coimbatore, and Cochin--bplnet has recently arrived in Delhi. Part of the BPL Innovision Business Group, the plan is to take bplnet to 31 cities of India.

Great, but there are two immediate issues. One, with the mushrooming of ISPs in recent months, is the market is big enough to accommodate all of them? With bandwidth being a major issue, everybody is getting into broadband and becoming ISP in the bargain. Says Jagjit Sawhney, 27, CEO, Net 4 India: "Even though there are some 200 licensees, only 70 are operational. Within this arena, there are distinct segments that have been formed.''

Just for form's sake, here they are: to start with, the plain-vanilla access providers and the ISPs that offer value-added services. Yet again, there are Category A, B, or C license holders operating in specific geographical pockets. Of course, there is a marked difference in the various price points at which these ISPs operate.

At the same time, the numbers are booming at the customer's end. From 1.7 lakh subscribers in 1999, NASSCOM puts the Net subscribers at 1 million by June, 2000, and predicts an increase to 1.6 million in 2001, and 2 million in 2002. Says Atul Kunwar, 37, CEO, Mantra Online: "Though these numbers are a little stretched, I would say they are achievable once there is easy clearance of ISP appplications by DOT and MTNL. The second factor which would have hampered the growth was the bandwidth problem, but with international gateways being opened up, that issue has been resolved."

Is the growth tapering off? No, says Kunwar. He explains: "What we are looking at is the latent demand that has been met. After the spurt, now the industry will show a normal growth rate."

The second issue is the price point at which bplnet has decided to operate. In recent months, we have seen the constant slashing of Net access hour rates. Bplnet offers its services at Rs 650 for 80 hours, and Rs 990 for 150 hours, compared to Rs 750 for 100 hours by VSNL, and Rs 500 for 100 hours by MTNL. Then, there are free ISPs like Caltiger to contend with.

Says Arun Varma, 40, COO of bplnet: "We would like to give the customer a quality service offering. We believe that the customer would be happy to pay so much more for a quality service. We have given our customers free Net access in the first month of our launch in a particular city. Some 6,000 customers and 50 corporates have come back and registered with us. Also, we are looking at the corporate customer, who is more interested in quality than the price point."

To reiterate this point, Varma sites a study which BPL had conducted while deciding the price for BPL services. The study showed that while only 5 per cent of Net subscribers changed their ISP, some 70 per cent would change the ISP if they saw a definite value proposition. Verma says: "We plan to have 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year." They have introduced help service for the customer where 'Netbuddy', the BPL service guy will come in and take care of the configuration, etc., at the customer end, besides handing out a crash-course in Net browsing.

Apart from the promise of quality, bplnet is also offering value-added services like separate access charges for nights and holidays. Between 11 at night and six in the morning, and on Sundays, access is free for BPL. And since 70 per cent of surfers access Net purely for mail, bplnet has special packages for just that segment. Also, by the end of the year, the ISP plans to make its services accessible from 85 countries in the world.

Other plans include dial-ups, as well as DSL access for both the corporate customer, as well as the individual. For DSL access, bplnet has tried to circumvent the problem that ISPs have faced with DSL technology--the ISP needs to put his equipment at the telephone exchange site, but here in India, the DoT does not allow that--by putting the DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer) inside housing buildings so as to have a Net Point of Presence (PoP) there.

Planning to set up some eight international gateways through satellite, they have taken 2 mb of IPLC (International Private Leased Circuit) (read: dedicated bandwidth) besides 10 mb of shared bandwidth from VSNL. Bplnet also has three Net properties--bplnet.com (where they aggregate content from various sources besides producing some of their own), oyeindia.com (which is a youth portal where they produce their own content), and innovisioncapital.com. BPL Innovision, with a corpus fund of $8-10 million, will be investing in the Web properties.

Lots of money and grand plans. Now that the fireworks are over, bplnet will have to work very hard in ensuring that it doesn't become a me-too ISP.

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