Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of anticipation and conjecture over the broadband scenario in India. Even though there have been continuous efforts by the government, service providers, and decision-makers to enhance the broadband penetration level, the Indian broadband picture is far from its goals.

Surprisingly, service providers not only botched to mark their presence among the masses, they have also failed to qualify the standards among the enterprise users. Poor quality of service, low bandwidths, and lack of innovative applications are making an ignominious position for them.

“Quality of service is a big issue for broadband connectivity as far as enterprises are concerned. It hardly matters if prices are slightly high. For an enterprise, there is a need to be connected all the time, to be able to exchange information with team members who are spread across the country,” says Tarun Pandey, CTO, ING Investment Management India.

Apart from quality of service (QoS), enterprise broadband access also remains restricted due to issues such as lack of proper service level agreements coupled with availability of last mile connections and relatively low bandwidth connectivity.

Collaboration holds the key to market expansion. Competition should be the focus and actually drives QoS as well as value added services. “We have seen this phenomenon in the mobile space; free market dynamics will certainly drive innovative ways to reuse spectrum as well as pricing,” says Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shopper's Stop.

Gupta further says that in application of broadband for consumers, the primary drivers will be gaming and entertainment-on-demand, whereas for corporate customers the benefit arises in real-time collaboration across multiple locations and the capability to connect virtual teams effectively.

Echoing similar thoughts, Zoeb Adenwala, CIO-Essel Propack, says, “Service providers have to significantly increase their reliability and customer service. They should come out with novel services using the latest technologies. At present, the speed is poor and costs are higher. Prices have to really come down by at least 70-75% in the next two years in order to attract mass usage. Reliability is also a serious concern coupled with poor customer service, which is far below the acceptable standards.”

In this era of competitive environment where a single minute delay could cost millions of rupees to the enterprise, it is understandable that besides quality and price, the future road map, alternate technology, geographic reach, dependability, area of coverage, and vendor support are some of the other important factors that should be considered by technology heads before deploying any technology solution.

“With ARPUs going down, it is important for services providers to focus on service bundling and to look at ways and means to expand the availability of broadband services, says A Prasad Babu, director, System Engineering and Operations, Juniper Networks.

It is universal availability of services, reduction in capex/opex through differentiated pricing for on-net and off-net traffic, and high availability of delivered services (up time) that act as major drivers while selecting broadband deployment,” Babu said further.

Concerned about the lack of innovative applications, Ajay Masur, CIO, HIRCO, says, “There is a dearth of availability of local content on the Internet in India, as compared to countries like Korea, Japan, etc. Moreover, security issues over broadband access is also a major threat to organizations.”

There is a different set of position available for all broadband technologies in the market where different options and price points are provided to different sets of consumers as per individual needs. No doubt wireless technologies such as WiMax and Wi-Fi would be the key focus areas as compared to others because of qualities such as high scalability.

Speaking about future deployments, Arun Gupta says, “We continue to monitor the environment for new technology offerings to emerge and adopt them based on value to business.”

While wireless and fiber optics would be the most popular in the Indian market, enterprises are also monitoring new technology offerings that could enhance connectivity.

“DSL/metro and WiMax technologies are expected to be very popular and crucial for the penetration of broadband services in India. Applications such as voice (IP/NGN), VoD, IPTV, distance education, high speed Internet, peer-to-peer communication/file sharing, and gaming are expected to gain popularity and drive the uptake of broadband services,” says Prasad Babu.

The application of broadband for consumers no doubt would be gaming and entertainment-on-demand, however, for corporate customers the benefit arises in real-time collaboration across multiple locations and the capability to connect virtual teams effectively.

“In reality, there are very few service providers in India who are providing good quality service at reasonable cost. Most operators fail to deliver the promise when it comes to quality and reliability. Security is also an area of concern,” says Sandeep Agarwal, senior manager, IT, Neilsoft.

Service providers and decision makers should work together to understand and address the issues to take the next step toward the broadband incursion in India.

According to Sanjay Aggarwal, GM, Operations, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), “India represents a huge opportunity for broadband, considering the market; cheaper rates can certainly help to accelerate penetration. Another important thing is the ISP infrastructure, which still needs lot of improvement; just like Indian roads-improving but a lot needs to be done. Most ISPs have issues at inter-change points that need to be taken care of.”

Industry experts strongly believe in the importance of the service providers' role to provide connectivity and content as bundle as, beyond a point, fast speed access has no relevance if there is no real content driving the adoption. Where fiber connectivity over copper is mostly preferable by the technology heads as it provides dedicated space to connect with people and transfer the information to them in a quick manner, wireless solutions such as Wi-Fi are also gaining ground among corporates.

As technology has become an enabler or a service delivery platform for an organization rather than a mere backbone of operations, it is imperative to take proper care of the needs of the business demands.

As broadband is never taken for simple browsing, it needs to be coupled with high performance and killer applications to make its way into enterprises.

Jatinder Singh
jatinders@cybermedia.co.in