Broadband on steroids
Will a new wireless technology change the way you surf?
Long years of waiting for real broadband speeds - India defines Internet speeds over 256 kilobits per second (kbps) as broadband - in the country may be over.
Despite tall claims by technology companies and telecom administrators about the spread of broadband, by the end of 2010 there are unlikely to be more than 10 million broadband connections in India. And, by the international definition of "highspeed" Internet - over one megabits per second (mbps) - only a quarter of those subscribers fit the bill.
Why has high-speed Internet not taken off in India? The problem simply is that getting the high-speed Direct Subscriber Line (DSL) connection into a house is expensive and time-consuming for telecom operators.
Despite the seemingly attractive high-speed packages, limits on downloads and splitting of high-speed DSL connections among multiple customers have not helped. Much as this will sound like sales spiel, fear not, there is a new technology in town.
Called Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, many people describe it as fourth-generation technology in the telecom business. LTE can offer very, very fast data connections. At a recent demonstration by telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks, speeds of over 100 mbps over an LTE network were demonstrated.
As NSN reminded everyone around, the demonstration was done on commercially available networks. Telecom companies will argue that third-generation (3G) networks allow high-speed data access, but the meagre spectrum licensed to them by the government will mean data speeds of less than one-fifth of what LTE can offer. And because operators will also be offering voice services, data connectivity over 3G, while being initially fast, could get overwhelmed by hundreds of millions of voices.
This is not to say that data connectivity on 3G will not be a lot faster than anything currently. But it will not be enough to satiate demand for content. Take a look at the rise of YouTube in India.
In spite of the paucity of broadband connections in the country, executives from Google, which owns the popular video site, claim that streaming matches of the Indian Premier League had over 55 million views from India. The television channel Colors puts up entire episodes of their shows on YouTube. But there is a slight problem here.
As we move to high-definition (HD), as video and gaming content move to higher resolution, the bandwidth needed increases. Take a look at the numbers: it will take 150 minutes to download a two-hour long HD movie on a 3G network and over 2,000 minutes on today's second-generation networks. Compare that with the 10 minutes LTE will take. Even if LTE operators restrict the bandwidth available to individual users, it will still be a lot faster than anything else available today.
And speeds, if anything, are only going to get faster. There is also the Intel-developed WiMAX technology competing against LTE, but in terms of technology, many operators have chosen LTE as the way forward. Who will bring this to you soon? When the government auctioned Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum along with 3G spectrum a few months ago, Reliance Industries couldn't have moved faster: the very day the bids closed the company bought the winning bidder.
That might prove to be a prescient move by Mukesh Ambani. India's richest man did dramatically shake up the voice telephony market when he launched his service eight years ago with phone tariffs unheard of until then. The affordability of broadband will be crucial, if India is to truly become a digital nation - and Ambani just might set the rules once again.
Despite tall claims by technology companies and telecom administrators about the spread of broadband, by the end of 2010 there are unlikely to be more than 10 million broadband connections in India. And, by the international definition of "highspeed" Internet - over one megabits per second (mbps) - only a quarter of those subscribers fit the bill.
Why has high-speed Internet not taken off in India? The problem simply is that getting the high-speed Direct Subscriber Line (DSL) connection into a house is expensive and time-consuming for telecom operators.
Despite the seemingly attractive high-speed packages, limits on downloads and splitting of high-speed DSL connections among multiple customers have not helped. Much as this will sound like sales spiel, fear not, there is a new technology in town.
Called Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, many people describe it as fourth-generation technology in the telecom business. LTE can offer very, very fast data connections. At a recent demonstration by telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks, speeds of over 100 mbps over an LTE network were demonstrated.
As NSN reminded everyone around, the demonstration was done on commercially available networks. Telecom companies will argue that third-generation (3G) networks allow high-speed data access, but the meagre spectrum licensed to them by the government will mean data speeds of less than one-fifth of what LTE can offer. And because operators will also be offering voice services, data connectivity over 3G, while being initially fast, could get overwhelmed by hundreds of millions of voices.
This is not to say that data connectivity on 3G will not be a lot faster than anything currently. But it will not be enough to satiate demand for content. Take a look at the rise of YouTube in India.
In spite of the paucity of broadband connections in the country, executives from Google, which owns the popular video site, claim that streaming matches of the Indian Premier League had over 55 million views from India. The television channel Colors puts up entire episodes of their shows on YouTube. But there is a slight problem here.
As we move to high-definition (HD), as video and gaming content move to higher resolution, the bandwidth needed increases. Take a look at the numbers: it will take 150 minutes to download a two-hour long HD movie on a 3G network and over 2,000 minutes on today's second-generation networks. Compare that with the 10 minutes LTE will take. Even if LTE operators restrict the bandwidth available to individual users, it will still be a lot faster than anything else available today.
And speeds, if anything, are only going to get faster. There is also the Intel-developed WiMAX technology competing against LTE, but in terms of technology, many operators have chosen LTE as the way forward. Who will bring this to you soon? When the government auctioned Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum along with 3G spectrum a few months ago, Reliance Industries couldn't have moved faster: the very day the bids closed the company bought the winning bidder.
That might prove to be a prescient move by Mukesh Ambani. India's richest man did dramatically shake up the voice telephony market when he launched his service eight years ago with phone tariffs unheard of until then. The affordability of broadband will be crucial, if India is to truly become a digital nation - and Ambani just might set the rules once again.
