I'll believe it when I see it, but that it's up for discussion again brings with it hope for broadband in India: Business Standard reports, quoting unnamed sources that BSNL is considering opening up its last mile to private players. This means that a private company can provide broadband connections to your home using BSNLs existing wireline connection to your home, without having to spend on laying a separate cable. One of the major issues is for private companies to seek a few thousand permissions (mild exaggeration) for digging roads for laying a separate cable, from the government, housing societies etc. Is It Needed Anymore? But is the last mile needed anymore? Three or four years ago, at the height of the telecom hype, this would probably have transformed broadband in India, but I'm not so sure if that is still the case. Telecom operators like Reliance Communications and Tata Indicom already provide Fixed WiMax broadband connections, and would they spend on upgrading the existing legacy copper infrastructure? India's broadband growth has been snail-paced at best, adding between 150,000-200,000 per month on an average, while wireline connections have been declining. The country reported 36.76 Million at the end of January 2010, a keeping with the trend of a steady decline. Of course, BSNL probably needs to cut costs and bring in the some money from it's wireline business, given the loss that their "non-cellular' business has incurred in the last fiscal: Will The Franchise Model Work? BSNL, according to the…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...