Market Information
The number of Internet subscribers declined, showing a negative growth of 10 percent. In terms of numbers, it went down from
2.8 million to 2.5 million. The total number of operational ISPs came down to
130. To facilitate the process of ISPs to get out of the business, DoT came up
with a guideline simplifying the procedure for their exit. In all, DoT had
issued a total of 436 licenses till the end of March 2002. The industry grew at
a CAGR of 41.13 percent over the period of last four years.
Total revenue in the
fiscal 2001-02 reached a figure of Rs 1,123.8 crore as compared to Rs 971 crore
in FY 2000-01.
The process of shakeout began with four national ISPs, some from the stables
of India’s leading corporate houses, shutting down their operations
completely. BPLNet’s operations were taken over by Delhi-based Data Access.
The deal will allow Data Access’s NOW to extend its operation in south.
WiproNet, the corporate ISP arm of Wipro exited from the scene with Sify
acquiring its customers. Jain Internet too exited the business altogether. With
Reliance launching its countrywide network parallel to BSNL, and its plans to
offer high speed corporate Internet services, it will provide wide options to
corporates to choose from the range of services on offer. Even Bharti Broadband
integrated its operation and is providing an integrated solution to corporates.
MTNL and BSNL, seeing the competition coming in, have put their acts together
and become aggressive and are offering cutting-edge technologies like VPN. The
growth status of broadband access during the fiscal 2001-02 remained far from
satisfactory, largely due to the lack of content, compounded by last-mile
problems. Cable and DSL option continued its phase of experimentation with
Internet over Ethernet, apart from a selected ISPs who went ahead with their
fixed wireless access plans for the corporates.
|
|
| Ajay
Data, MD, Data Infosys |
| Prasoon
Srivastava, general manager (infrastructure solutions group), Tata
Internet Services |
| R
Ramaraj, CEO, Sify |
|
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