India ready for broadband explosion

New Delhi: With new license holders rolling out services, the Indian telecom sector is likely to witness an investment of over Rs1,30,000 crore in the next two years. This announcement came from Siddharth Behura, secretary, Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & IT while inaugurating the 16th Convergence India 2008 event in the capital.

He said that the present growth of broadband in the country would get a boost from the reduction of CPE prices and USOF initiatives. He was hoping that 75% of the required equipment would be made in the country itself.

RSP Sinha, CMD, MTNL, foretold that India would soon become a super power in telecom with Indian operators routinely racking up over eight million new mobile customers every month. Gupta was convinced that the next exponential growth will be broadband explosion.

MTNL is the only telecom operator in the world to offer IPTV on MPEG 4, whereas the European countries are offering this service on MPEG 2,” informed Sinha. He also revealed that MTNL has already launched mobile TV services in Mumbai and Delhi. This would be an affordable service where users could also see each other in addition to hearing the voice.

Announcing MTNL’s future plans, Sinha added that the operator is focusing on fixed-mobile convergence which will help in better utilization of spectrum.

Over 550 participants from all over the world have taken part in the event. With telecom density moving from 0.5% to 25%, it was set to reach 50% by 2010.