HCL-BSNL to work together on National Broadband Penetration program

BANGALORE, INDIA: One of India’s largest telecom companies, BSNL, and HCL Infosystems, announced that they will be working together on the National Broadband Penetration Program (NBPP), a nationwide initiative to accelerate IT proliferation in rural India.

The project aims to accelerate PC and broadband penetration by offering a complete solution and to create new markets in the interiors of the country.

The NBPP project, believed to be the largest government program to promote rural connectivity till date, aims to break through the affordability barrier.

The project aims to power the next million PC+ Broadband connections in untapped market space through the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) under DOT which has granted a subsidy to BSNL for providing wire line broadband connectivity in rural and remote areas.

USOF will be providing a subsidy of Rs. 4500/- per broadband connection that BSNL will be rolling out through their existing 27,789 rural and remote telephone exchanges.

“Today, the need to create a progressive environment of growth is more than ever before. Indian economy, in the past few years, has grown but the growth can be accelerated and made more inclusive by providing an impetus to PC and Broadband penetration in rural India. This project for BSNL is in line with our strategy for mass adoption of PC + Broadband to promote India’s GDP growth,” said Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman & CEO, HCL Infosystems Ltd.

With this ambitious program, HCL and BSNL aim to address the significant untapped demand in rural markets by providing a complete solution to the customer This solution will be available to customer at a nominal payment of Rs. 2,250/- followed by Rs. 300/- per month for the PC and subsidized broadband package at Rs.99/- or Rs.150/- per month.

This program is seen as an initiative from Government of India and USOF to support inclusive growth. Different countries across the globe have adopted this model of partnering with IT companies to infuse PC-Broadband growth for national development. As India is poised for growth, this program will significantly contribute in ensuring sustained economic growth. There is a direct and favourable correlation to the number of Personal Computers (PCs) per inhabitant to the per capita GDP of the country.

A study shows that for country like China, the per capita GDP is expected to increase from $ 8,000 to $ 18,000 as PC penetration increases from 5 percent to 24 percent from 2005 to 2015. Countries like Korea, Singapore and Sweden attribute their inclusive economic growth over the past decade greatly to the increased PC & broadband penetration.

“This is indeed the one of the major initiatives to bridge the digital divide by offering PC + Broadband at a subsidized rates to our customers. We are delighted to partner with HCL Infosystems for this nation wide program. The missing pie in PC and broadband proliferation was the affordability and service which are now being provided jointly by us and HCL, with support from USOF to increase desirability.” said Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL.

Complementing BSNLs need for a partner with extensive rural reach, experience and servicing ability, HCL Infosystems continues to lay more emphasis on creating appropriate programs and solutions for the Indian rural markets. Committed to bridge the ‘Digital Divide’ in the country HCL has been one of the pioneers in India to create special ICT products and solutions for the rural markets.

Over the years, HCL has innovated and developed various products and solutions to address the rural market in India including rural PCs that work on car batteries, special products for milk co-operatives in rural India, packages for education and literacy in rural India, the development of special software and hardware products for addressing financial inclusion of persons who currently do not use the banking system in rural India, programs for panchayat computerisation and support for community service centres through government schemes and the ITC e-Chaupal program.

Speaking on the occasion, Ajay Bhattacharya, USOF (Administrator) commented that the steps taken by BSNL are in the right direction of digitalizing India with a special emphasis on rural India. USOF desires that more such partnerships should be developed in future so that benefits of broadband should reach every citizen of the country.

Providing strength to NBPP program will be HCL's innovative service & support initiative, ‘HCL TOUCH’, which is delivered through one of India’s largest IT service and support networks. HCL Touch has a network that reaches out to over 4,000 towns and delivers services in 11 regional languages. The ‘HCL Touch’ network consists of 14 remote support centers, 505 service offices, 390 ware houses and 150 repair centers.

Rajesh Wadhwa, who heads Fixed Access Business in BSNL expressed his happiness on the program. He stressed that field staff must come up to the expectation of the overall objective of the project. He told that this initiative will prove to be a major milestone in taking country to next level of civilization.

Speaking on the occasion, Intel South Asia’s Managing Director of the Sales and Marketing Group, R. Sivakumar said: “Intel has been committed to delivering the technology needed to connect Indians to the Internet and enabling them to leverage its unlimited potential. Affordable access to information via broadband internet is the key for India’s competitiveness in today’s global economy.

"The National Broadband Penetration Program is an excellent step forward and brings access of 21st century learning skills and IT business tools and opportunities to our population base. Intel is pleased to partner with HCL and BSNL on the National Broadband Penetration Program that aims to accelerate PC and broadband penetration.”

Breakthrough cellular technology for remote communities in India and Asia

MUMBAI, INDIA: Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) across India and South Asia are reaching out across their respective regions to deliver wireless services where, until now, communities have been without even the most basic forms of telephony. The technology now exists to enable them to do so, profitably -- and rapidly.

At India & South Asia Com in Mumbai, leading provider of wireless solutions for cutting the cost of communications, Altobridge, will be delivering its exclusive paper: “Cost-Effective Wireless Communications in Remote Parts of India & South Asia”, in which company Sales Director, Colm Jones, will discuss how MNOs can solve the technical, operational and business issues of delivering mobile services to their most remote, low-population user groups by using the world’s most cost-effective remote mobile communications solution –

‘The Altobridge Remote Community Solution’
In India, less than 30 percent of the 1.16 billion population live in urban areas, leaving a rural population of immense proportions. While less than 38 million fixed phone lines are in use across the whole country, the growth in mobile phone penetration since deregulation has been phenomenal, with 362 million mobile phones now in use with an ARPU of US$5. Combined fixed and mobile phone density, however, remains low at around 35 phones per 100 people.

Many of those without phones are spread amongst the 10,000 small, remote, rural communities in need of communications and whose only hope, technologically, is on mobile solutions combined with satellite backhaul. However, to ensure an effective ROI on any deployment, MNOs need to adopt significant changes in their core network.

This is where Indian and Asian MNOs can benefit from the technologies Altobridge has developed, which will enable them to reach out immediately with the most cost-effective solution to deliver mobile communications to these hundreds of millions of people.

The Remote Community Solution from Altobridge combines its patented Split Architecture with a unique Local Connectivity function. The Split Architecture creates an on-demand use of expensive satellite bandwidth, which restricts usage to times when only revenue-generating traffic is occurring. The Local Connectivity element switches ‘local calls’ locally at the community base station, eliminating unnecessary backhaul onto the core network transmission links. This, in turn, improves call quality by removing double satellite hops.

Mike Fitzgerald, Altobridge CEO, said: “A further compelling aspect of our solution is our Operational Model, which bundles our unique wireless offering with new and installed Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) and benefits from the existing local teams of installation and support professionals already on the ground and serving remote communities.

“The Indian National Satellite System, which comprises six satellites, supports 33,000 VSATs across the country and is a major asset to the whole challenge of delivering services to India’s remote regions. These installed VSATs can combine perfectly with the Altobridge solution to deliver cost-effective services.

“VSATs are very low cost and today exist in their tens of thousands, deployed around the world. They are, however, very much under-utilised in small remote communities throughout developing and emerging countries like India. MNOs have already identified this installed base as the ideal, cost-effective means of rapidly extending their GSM services to remote communities, and ‘bundling’ GSM and VSAT at remote locations enables ‘Sathaul’ -- base stations backhauled over satellite -– to provide operators with an effective and practical means of delivering GSM services where they would otherwise not be viable,” Fitzgerald concluded.

CMAI signs MoU with Cambridge Wireless

N.K. Goyal is among my oldest friends, mentor and acquaintance in the Indian telecom industry. Yesterday afternoon, he alerted me about this significant development.

First, a bit about N.K. Goyal. He is currently the president, Communications & Manufacturing Association of India (CMAI), chairman Emeritus TEMA (Telecom Equipment Manufacturers' Association of India), Chairman CTIA, and Vice Chairman ITU APT India.

India has been focusing significantly on wireless broadband in order to bring the power of the internet to rural India, thereby fostering economic growth. To facilitate and make this a reality, the Communications & Manufacturing Association of India has signed an MoU with Cambridge Wireless to foster this aim.

You can read more of this at Business Weekly, UK.

Those of you interested in the Indian telecom industry should be aware that India already has over 400 million telecom subscribers and is targeted to cross the 650 million by 2012, with new subscribers joining at the rate of 10-15 million a month.

Thank you very much, Sir! Well done for keeping India's telecom flag flying high.