“The best way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present”

- John Naisbitt

AFFORDABLE BROADBAND: NEWER TECHNOLOGY

AND APPLICATIONS

Suggestions & Thoughts Are Welcome

Affordable Broadband: The Why‟s & Wherefores

WHY?

Urban India has had internet access for over a decade now – do you all remember how access

changed from dial-up to DSL to wireless over the last 15 years and how it has impacted all our

learnings over these years

It bridges the digital divide converting non-metro areas into an information society and

thereby increases employment in those areas

HOW?

We would all agree that Wireless is the way to go for Broadband Access and that „X‟TTH

technologies will probably never happen in non-urban areas as,

They require Time and currently have very low penetration

Wireless access speeds keep increasing

Today for BWA the infrastructure is already in place,

A pay per use passive infra setup with options in place

A pay per use Backbone setup with fewer but increasing options

WHEN?

Today the non-metro areas pose a bigger opportunity than what the metro areas posed a

decade ago

More people with more awareness and more desires

A faster growth curve of the burgeoning middle class

Defining Affordability The availability of a product or service at a convenient price????

The availability of a DESIRED product or service at a convenient price?

This brings us to some fundamental questions about BWA

What will make BWA an affordable option?

Availability of Entertainment using BWA

Availability of Information using BWA

Availability of Services (Medicine, Education, Jobs etc.)

Availability of Commerce using BWA

Availability of Social Networking using BWA

Etc.

Availability of Low-Cost Consumer Devices

Availability of Low-Cost bandwidth or Price of Service

The Desired

Means to achieve

the Desired

Now we have our Question: Does The Desire exist in the non-metro areas of India so that ‘The

Desired’ & ‘The Means’ should be made available at an affordable rate?

The Answer is yes!! The people of India are increasingly aware of the benefits of Internet

Services and the ways in which it can change their lives

Now we come to the Topic of this Presentation:

“Affordable Broadband: Newer Technologies &

Applications”

Going by the previous slide where I stated that Indians have the ‘Awareness’ that has

created ‘The Desire’ the below seems logical

Applications = “The Desired”

Newer Technologies = “Means to Achieve The Desired”

We will discuss both the above in an Indian context in the remaining part of this presentation

Which Applications are driving the Internet usage globally & in Urban India?

What has been the global trend of Application usage growth & Bandwidth usage

growth?

What will decide the technology winner of BWA? IS it going to be Bandwidth, Latency,

Spectral Efficiency and such technically debatable parameters OR will it be Low-cost

Handsets, Network Roaming & other such customer oriented aspects?

What will be made first – A US$ 100 Phone-Computer OR a US$ 100 Computer-

Phone? And who will make it?

Applications are mostly available on the WWW Applications can be broken down largely into the below categories

Entertainment

Social Networking Sites like FB drive the internet significantly

Probably even more visited though fragmented are Pornography sites

Music, Movies and other entertainment sites like Youtube drive the bandwidth

demand significantly

Information

Google is the undisputed gateway site to information on the web

All other sites contribute to the immense information repository we know as the

world wide web

Utilitarian

E-Mail servers are probably the largest utility sites

Product download sites like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple etc.

In India we have Naukri, Shaadi.com as hugely successful sites

Commerce

All the e-commerce sites like Amazon, e-Bay and in India like Indiatimes, Rediff

Applications can also be segregated into Subscription

Driving Applications & Bandwidth Driving Applications

Lets look at the biggest Subscription Driving Applications first

If Facebook was a country it would be the world‟s 3rd Largest

Today if someone wants to know how many English speaking people are there in

Singapore they just study the Singapore FB users‟ profile!!

Some statistics about FaceBook India

There are over 12 Million users and increasing exponentially

Mobile uploads increased 900% over the last 1 year

53 Million pictures are uploaded every month in India

Announces Hindi & 5 other languages for vernacular users

Lets also look at the biggest bandwidth driving

applications

February 2005 the founders

registered the Domain Name

October 2006 they sold it to

Google for US$ 1.65 Billion

It is the 5th most visited site in

India

It had 55 Million Channel

Views for IPL Channel from

across 200 countries

Projections say that by 2014

Mobile Video will contribute

to over 60% of Mobile Data

Lets also visit what China has done on the Mobile

Applications front Lets look at TenCent – China‟s leading Online Community which is the worlds third

largest Internet company after Google & Amazon

Another company called TaoBao has also achieved 145 Million Subscribers and a

GMV of US$ 12 Bn

Some Statistics of Interest about Mobile Phones

Today there are 1.7 Billion Internet Users globally distributed between mobile & PC

as shown below, where pure mobile users > pure PC users

The Mobile is accepted now as the Seventh Mass Media Channel and which is slated

to become the biggest of them all (the other 6 are – Print, Recordable Media like

Cassette/CD/DVD, Cinema, Radio, TV, Internet)

PC Internet

Users

Mobile Internet

Users500 Mil800 Mil400 Mil

The Mobile Internet market is

expected to grow exponentially over

the next 4-5 years and mobile video

will be the biggest driver for that

making it important to have affordable

video playing mobile phones

PC-Phone OR Phone-PC

Today the PC-Phone market is led by Apple whereas there are several players

leading the Phone-PC race (Nokia, RIM, HTC etc.)

Whoever wins the race will be the one who,

Makes an „Affordable‟ Phone

Has the distribution problem solved

Has adequate Operator tie-ups

Creates integrated Applications

Customizes Locally

Lets see what China has done on the handsets front

Finally Lets discuss the Technology alternatives for BWA

Today the race in India is largely between TD-LTE & Wi - MAX as a Technology of choice for

the subscribers

Let us look at each of these technologies under the following heads

Cost of Technology

Here the cost of Technology will be dependent on economies of scale so the global

leader will also have an edge in India over its rivals

Cost of Consumer Devices

This is one of the main reasons why CDMA lost out to GSM because CDMA

operators could not continue subsidizing handsets forever and economies of scale

were not building up

Cost of Infrastructure

This is one area where things would even out for any technology as India today

has a very competitive Passive Infrastructure market and also huge fiber backbone

availability

Convenience of Usage

The most important aspect would be roaming, which again would be dependent on

the globally leading technology and backward integration with 3G & 2G

We must remember that CDMA players could never solve the roaming

inconvenience for their subscribers and hence never really had the cream with them

BWA is the cynosure of Convergence in our Industry and

therefore it is extremely important to make it an

affordable Access Technology

BWA will not only drive the Convergence of Technology, Devices, Internet but

also of the Users and gradually Mobile Internet will become a social

equalizer in India surpassed probably only by the Mumbai Rains

BWA

Technology (Voice, Data,

3G, LTE)

IT (Internet Protocol, PC, Devices etc)

Internet (Video,

Commerce etc)

User (Consumer, Enterprise, Student)

THANK YOU