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AK Sinha, CMD, BSNL: In his keynote address Sinha emphasized that the Indian telecom market is growing rapidly and has great potential. He stated that true value lies in harvesting new technologies and making services universally acceptable. Sinha added, “Progressive government policies and innovative telecom managers will help in empowering the masses.” According to him, the growing data traffic and stagnating voice traffic has led the network operators to redesign their networks and adopt technologies like IP, MPLS and broadband to provide the triple play services through their networks.

“Broadband access is the buzzword for today, the market is for fast Internet access, distance learning, multimedia downloads, interactive gaming and video services which can be provided by wireline and wireless broadband technologies,” Sinha said. He was of the view that these services will also help corporates in cutting costs and improving bottom lines. Shedding light on the expected growth of broadband services he added that the global market is expected to grow more than double, to $80 bn in the next five years, with an average CAGR of 32.5%. He added that three ingredients have to be taken care of-quality infrastructure, affordable access devices, and local content. He said, “I am confident that broadband deployment will lead to a new era of growth and all of us will be happy to be living in this period.”

AK Sinha, CMD, BSNL

Session I
Broadband in Retrospect
The panel discussed last year's achievements of Broadband deployment in the country, the learnings from the previous year and the business models that are complementary to broadband. The role of the regulator and the government in establishing broadband was also discussed. The panel was in consensus that availability and development of content for broadband was a major issue along with quality of service.

SN Gupta, advisor, Converged Networks, TRAI opened the panel by elaborating on the present state of affairs on broadband in India. He added that Internet connection is a cause of concern as customer number is very low. He added, “The first year of broadband was tough but we were able to reach the one million mark.” According to him, it was a good beginning and he expects, that by 2007, India would have 9 mn broadband subscribers. He also listed a few technical and policy related bottlenecks faced in the first year by the broadband market. He added that now the ball was in the service providers' court and they have to take the initiative to popularize broadband.

YL Aggarwal, MD, Aksh Broadband was of the view that state governments were keen on setting up their own networks providing rural connectivity. “Especially in rural areas, people are keen to have entertainment and connectivity and for that you need broadband which can enable triple play”, he added. He also shed light on the types of requirements and the applications popular in rural areas such as e-governance. He added, “Broadband would flourish in India if  state governments participate actively and with some equity.”

Sanjay Dwivedi, CEO, Spectranet was of the view that broadband is related to strategic development of the country as India has the potential of becoming the knowledge power. According to him, despite growth in this area, not much was being done to make it a mass technology. He said, “Broadband deployment requires a missionary outlook rather than a satisfied one which the government has developed.” He added that the regulatory environment was against the growth of medium enterprises, therefore aligning with one another was the only option for ISPs.” Different companies will come together to take services to the subscriber” he added.

SP Jerath, president, operations, Korea Telecom, was of the view that telcos were playing a major role in the broadband services and they have to take a mature look towards it. He pointed that evolution of technology was also important for evolution of broadband. He emphasized, “Quality of service is very important if broadband is to be made a popular service.” He added that guidelines are needed to make broadband a preferred technology. According to him, a strategy is also needed for content development, as it is the main driver of broadband.

Rahul Sharma, chief marketing officer, Sterlite Technology added that there was a huge potential for broadband expansion but the key learning is that it will not happen if we don't improve the quality of service.  “The content and innovative application beyond video and Internet are important to lead the path of broadband expansion,” he added.

Session II
The Hunt for Killer Services: Will IPTV/Video-on-Demand Hit Big Time
This session saw the discussion on the availability of killer applications for broadband-whether these will be profitable applications for service providers, and what the customer expectations were. The panel was of the view that the profitability is still not clear, it needs to be observed as one moves on. The important thing is to have a right business case.

Kuldeep Singh, director technical, MTNL, on the issue of a killer service for broadband, mentioned all the three-VoIP, Internet and video application. He added that profitable and popular applications will be the same. He added, “Alternative streams of revenue will have to be developed by service providers”.

Lav Gupta, DDG Broadband, BSNL, was of the view that killer applications are a way to increase penetration of broadband. “Every operator has an application in his mind for which he has built or is building up infrastructure,” he added. He stated that P2P applications still hog the bandwidth and this, along with e-mail, will be the killer application even tomorrow. “Whether video and other entertainment services will be killer application, is still uncertain,” he added.

Sudhir Chopra, group CTO, Bharti Infotel, said there was no single killer application. “The service providers need to offer a bouquet of services and let customers decide what services they want”. He was of the view that the demand of bandwidth will increase manifold and consumers will want more freedom. He added that the customer wants benefits in prices, quality of service and all these bundled together.

Deepak Maheshwari, secretary, ISPAI pointed out that every business would have a different business model which is important to maintain differentiation. He stated, “there are two major killer applications, one is faster Internet access and the other, phone to phone Internet telephony within the country.”

Lalit Chandak, president, Span Technologies was of the view that voice is the big driver for broadband, so any application that enables voice on Internet will be a big killer application. “Indian consumers spend on education, health and entertainment, so all these applications which are basically demanded by consumers will drive Internet and broadband,” he added.

Niranjan Kamat, architect, Broadband & Media Services, HP, was of the view that a killer application is in the context of who the subscriber is.  “Even e-education could be a killer application for consumers and, for the government, surveillance application might be a killer application,” he added. He also added that service providers are not ready to provide IPTV and video on demand as, we still have bandwidth related problems and other issues.

Ramdev Sharma, GM, Mktg & Business Development, Huawei India, added that when “we relate broadband to national economic development it should be made a necessity. There are a host of killer applications that will accelerate growth of broadband but they require higher bandwidth. So there is need to review the definition of broadband.” Stating that IPTV had the potential of becoming a killer application, he said the infrastructure was not ready for killer applications.

Session III
Building the Right Content Ecosystem: Partnership Model & Revenue Share
This session discussed how the scenario has changed in the last one year and how the relationship between content developers and service providers has evolved. The challenges in content development were also discussed. The panel was of the view that there should be an open channel between service providers and content providers, and that localized content needs to be developed. Concerns were also raised on the less number of content developers and the revenue sharing model in India.

Rohit Pande, CEO, Mindshapers added that a lot has changed in the past few years-there is actual roll out, actual deals happening and the companies are very optimistic. He added, ”Service providers play an important role in developing a habit of services which will help in reaching a critical mass.” He also said that in the area of content a 40:60 revenue sharing model was prevalent.

Hilmi Quraishi, director, Content, ZMQ Software Systems was of the view that things have changed for the better but a lot still needs to be done on the part of content providers as well. “Broadband needs to recognize the existence of VAS and form a tripartite coalition of content providers, service providers and the government.” He added that revenue share reduces if the service provider is bigger, which is not desirable.

Niranjan Kamat, architect, Broadband & Media Services, HP, added that service providers want content but the issues of security and clarity of content are also big. “Service providers have simplified their operations with the content developers in terms of revenue sharing; we will be moving towards a content hosting model instead of choosing and deploying a particular content.” he added.

Rahul Sharma, assistant manager, MDCI, added that instead of catering to the existing need we should try to create the need. “ We should give a customer so much that they get used to it and it becomes a necessity,” he added.

Rakesh Kumar, joint DDG, Broadband services, BSNL, pointed out that for content to make sense, we need to acquire a critical mass, which we are soon going to achieve. “a broadband revolution has started and we have to focus on TV content along with PC content.” He also pointed out that there was need to build an ecosystem by content aggregators.

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