Broadband services in India has not really taken off till now. According to IDC, Indian broadband equipment market is expected to touch Rs 66.52 crore by 2005. Lucent, Alcatel, Juniper, Paradyne are some of the leading vendors in the broadband equipment space.

Bangalore-based I-Spatial has won the BSNL tender to provide broadband service riding on the PSU’s network. I-Spatial has tied up with Nortel, Minerva Networks, nCube and Paradyne Network. It has already started two pilot projects at Jadavpur telephone exchange near Kolkata and Ghaziabad near Delhi to demonstrate its offerings. Offerings include fast Internet access at 128 kbps, video-on-demand, movie-on-demand and games. BSNL officials expect a full-scale commercial launch by 31 March in Kolkata, Pune and Bangalore. The services would be extended to Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh by the end of August. Similarly Reliance Infocomm plans to rollout its broadband initiative in the coming months in more than 100 cities. Bharti has also started offering high speed Internet through DSL.

On the cable front, big MSOs like Hathway, In2Cable, and Siticable are trying to expand the market.

EXPERTS PANEL A Sethuraman, director, Alcatel Broadband Division Java Giridhar, country manager, Juniper Networks Krishnan Kannan, marketing manager (broadband communications sector), Motorola India