India To Offer Free Broadband by 2009

codecracker007 writes "The Government of India is planning to introduce free 2 mbps broadband for all residents of the Indian subcontinent by 2009. The expected service shall be launched by the government owned telecom operators BSNL and MTNL. Quoting from the article: 'The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.' The India Times has an extensive editorial on the decision. It must be mentioned that the Indian government and its autonomous regulatory bodies are very proactive in holding the consumer interests above the operators', managing to reduce the long distance and wireless tariffs by a up to factor of 20 in less than 7 years."

Increasing Competition?

[ChromaticDragon]

How exactly does one increase competition by reducing the number of players? Please forgive me, but I am enormously skeptical of the ultimate purposes of this plan. At the highest level, this sounds very good. Many in India have benefited greatly as the benefits of telephony became available to them, especially the poor. However... This was not due to BSNL/MTNL. It was most recently due to a host of other players that dramatically lowered prices across the board for GSM phone and internet access. Mind you, there were many in India who decided to keep their original GSM phone service with these existing operators but who were simply thrilled at how Reliance and others forced prices to drop, and drop and drop. TRAI seems to swing back and forth between who's been more effective at getting their people/policies/desires in there (cough, cough, buying them off, cough, cough). The article seems to suggest the fight is now with the big, bad international carriers. But international calls have also dropped in price over the years due to competition. It's now actually cheaper for our relatives in India to call the US than the other way around. And the statement in the article about internet traffic routing outside India and back in seems hilarious. I'd really like to dig deeper into that claim. It's obvious traffic to well known websites outside India are going to cause that effect. In essence, this entire endeavor simply seems like a policy coup by the national operators to restore their position as the monopoly. Forgive me, but I'm very skeptical about their ability to perform here given their history. And I'm horribly concerned about the long-term effect of killing off competition.

The actual story

[buzzzz]

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/29315.html [indianexpress.com]

There is no such plan.

India's Minister of Communications & Information Technology recently launched the Re.1 OneIndia scheme where all telephone calls originating and ending in India (local and long distance, mobile and landline) will cost only Re 1. (2 Cents) During the press conference he was asked if a similar scheme is possible for net connectivity and he said the vision is to:

1. Start web hosting with MTNL and BSNL (The govt owned telecom companies) so that most Indian pages are hosted within India.
2. Once most Indian internet traffic terminates within India, reduce cost of internet connectivity in a big way, possibly even make it free.

When asked how long it will take to implement this, he said he still has 2 years to make something happen which is to mean the 2 years left in his term as the minister till the next general election.

There is no formal plan as of now and the story as posted on Slashdot is vastly exaggerated. Even the long goal in his comments was to offer free Broadband connection to subscribers with a land-line connection from BSNL or MTNL. Essentially, a free upgrade in competition against other providers.

There is no plan to provide internet connectivity to every person in India. I do hope, however, that someday it is possible to provide free internet access to every village for the vast benefits it could and would bring.