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What are Hughes' focus areas in India?
Hughes is focused on delivering satellite broadband services to large enterprises, government, small and medium businesses and consumers.

What are Hughes' growth plans in India? Please elaborate on investment, people, systems, etc.
We have since our inception invested over $300 mn and will continue to strengthen our presence to reap the enormous opportunity that India offers. Currently, we already have 800 plus Internet kiosks operational across 200 cities and towns in the country and plan to scale it up to 50,000 in the next three years. We have also started a new communications software development company called Hughes Systique in 2005 that complements our telecom story in India.

What were the key challenges faced by you in India?
One of the biggest challenges faced by the industry as a whole is to effectively demonstrate the relevance of satellites in today's context of telecom connectivity and a viable medium for multicasting. Hughes has over the years evangelized the benefits of satellite broadband in India and has created many services and offerings.

Following the restructuring worldwide, what will be the impact in India?
Hughes underwent a global restructuring in March last year, where we introduced our new service brand HughesNet replacing DIRECWAY®. HughesNet encompasses all broadband solutions and services from Hughes, bringing the best of satellite and terrestrial technologies to customers across the world-this is true even for our customers across enterprise, government, small business, and consumer segments in India. HughesNet presents a more compelling value proposition of our company's overall market reach and capability to address a diverse set of business challenges faced by enterprises today.

Can you enumerate some new technology innovations?
Today, Hughes has shipped more than 1,400,000 systems to customers in over 100 countries. Its broadband satellite products are based on the IPoS (IP over Satellite) global standard, approved by the TIA, ETSI, and ITU standards organizations.

From a technical point of view, improvements in data delivery technologies, as well as voice, and satellites ability to carry IP traffic are drawing renewed interest from more businesses. Some of the new services that satellites are being used for effectively are VPN services as well as static IP capabilities for typical Internet communications. Satellites are also being used to deploy Wi-Fi hotspot for backhaul.

How would you create awareness about satellite broadband?
We are working with various government and non-governmental organizations to showcase the benefits of satellite broadband for a country like India.

What is Hughes' contribution toward reducing the digital divide?
We believe that satellite broadband can be a great equalizer for India that can bridge the proverbial digital divide. Broadband is not just about technology or speed or throughput, rather it is the economic and productive value that it can create in peoples lives, the change that it can make by way of access to quality education, health and information.

Hughes has been working with both state and central governments to create information kiosks that can give access to people to a slew of services. We plan to set up 1,000 rural information communication and technology (ICT) kiosks within the next three years in India, primarily focusing on providing education, teaching aides and rural banking. We are also rolling out 5,000 ICT kiosks in partnership with Microsoft. With 350 mn illiterates and a dropout rate of 87%, satellite broadband is a viable solution for an inclusive growth for India.

By our Senior Correspondent
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in