The opening up of the Domestic Long Distance (DLD) has given the final push to the plans for the New Networks in the country. Picture of the future networks will become clearer as the networks are laid across. It will take a few more years before India can stake its claim to possess true broadband networks capable of providing host of broadband services across the country. This will result not only in better connectivity, but will also spawn a true convergence revolution in terms of various multimedia services, making content delivery better than ever. The dream of "always-on" may then become a reality. These networks are being rolled out by almost every category of players—from the cable operators to ISPs to fixed service providers to the would-be-DLD service providers.

Most of the players are laying fibre as it is considered to be a one-time investment and is aimed at creating capacity that can subsequently be increased using DWDM. Data players like ISPs are also laying fibre perceiving an increase in demand for more bandwidth. The Government is yet to announce the policy of awarding fixed services licence for most circles.

Currently, the focus is on creating sufficient bandwidth for network reliability. Caltiger and Dishnet, the two major ISPs apart from Bharti, have plans to lay submarine cable for making bandwidth available to India. Caltiger has plans for 3,000 rkm of submarine optic fibre cable. Andhra Pradesh is planning to set up state’s own high-capacity satellite-based network using Malaysian MEASAT satellite.