Delhi region enters broadband era

By Anand Parthasarathy

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 28. ``Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it'' - American humorist Mark Twain's quip about the weather could just as well apply to the continuing Indian hype about launching the nation into the so-called broadband communication era. But not any more: Of the three leading private sector initiatives - in Maharashtra, Chennai and Delhi - to install fibre optic cable on a large scale, the Capital was first off the block today with the commissioning of over 600 km in Delhi and Gurgaon across both homes and offices.

Mr. Atul Punj, Chairman of Spectra Net Ltd (SNL), an Internet and Cable TV provider, said the fibre optic cable laid by the company was ``India's first broadband convergent network created to meet the information communication and entertainment needs of the 21st Century''. Broadband - unlike the common telephone line - allows a rich mix of text, stereo quality sound, moving and still pictures to be carried to individual homes, either via Internet or by a Cable TV operator. It will allow, for example, entire three-hour Hindi feature films to be received as and when the customer wants, at real-time speeds.

To give lay users a feel of what esoteric terms like ``broadband'' will actually do for them by way of a rich entertainment potential, Spectra Net has set up a demonstration centre at New Delhi's sprawling Ansal Plaza.

The company has already tied up with cable operators, in the Capital region, so that their networks are upgraded to carry such a multimedia mix of ``edutainment''. To start with, Spectra has ``wired'' several corporate offices, and promises that individual households are a very high next priority. It already offers ``Internet-over-TV'' in select areas and has also taken up about 100 km of fibre optic wiring in Bangalore.

Meanwhile, Enron - the U.S. company whose Dhabol Power Corporation was mired in environmental controversies - has popped up in an unlikely new look: at the ongoing India Internet World (IIW) exhibition that concludes here on Friday, Enron was a high- profile presence, presenting its broadband connectivity solutions. The company recently joined the Maharashtra Government in a project to wire the State with state-of-the-art cabling. An Enron spokesperson told The Hindu today that the first Internet data centre (IDC) - a sort of clearing house for data-intensive Net applications such as multimedia - will be launched later this year, followed by Bangalore early next year. A company for the joint programme with the Maharashtra Government has been formed, Broadband Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (BSPL), and the State has given Enron ``right of way'' along public communication highways. To link up with the global Net, an undersea cable is also being laid from Mumbai across the Arabian Sea.

In Chennai, a cable will soon stretch in the opposite direction - towards Singapore - when Dishnet DSL executes its plans to buy huge new bandwidth from the global telecom market. But at IIW here today, Dishnet was addressing a more earthy audience- hundreds of students who crowded its stalls to seek information about Internet access rates. It also unveiled an interactive learning programme that rides piggyback on its service, ``Top@School''.

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