The Hindu : Front Page : Unwiring India? IT's already begun

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 18, 2007
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Unwiring India? IT's already begun

Anand Parthasarathy

Public initiatives in Bangalore, Pune

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Bangalore: Untethering Internet access from wires and cables might well be 2007's biggest technology blimp — and India is in the frontline of nations who are sensibly complementing the purely corporate roadmap with earthy aspirations for the rural hinterland.

This is one of the key findings of the first-ever comprehensive study of Wi-Fi (the local area wireless Internet technology) in India, released here on Wednesday. Commissioned by the United States-based Wi-Fi Alliance, the 300-strong global trade association of wireless local area network industry, the three-month study was carried out by the Indian communications analyst, Tonse Telecom.

Interestingly, two secondary metros, Bangalore and Pune, are first off the starting block when it comes to creating city-wide Wi-Fi networks.

The Tamil Nadu based telecom provider Aircell is expected to announce on Thursday, details of its plan for Bangalore — expected to be a mix of Wi-Fi and the longer range `back end' technology, WiMax. In Pune the Municipal Corporation has taken the lead, in partnership with Intel, to link a Wi-Fi-WiMax combo to the national Internet backbone, in time for the Commonwealth Youth Games to be held in the city in 2008.

Three States not generally recognised to be tech-savvy — Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — have chosen to harness Wi-Fi and WiMax to help provide Internet connectivity in rural areas.

Sridhar Y. Pai, Chief Executive of Tonse Telecom explained that the explosive growth in the use of laptop PCs, was one of the key reasons why the Wi-Fi market in India was so bullish. The total hardware and services opportunity was expected to cross $800 million by 2012.

Frank Hanzik, Managing Director of the Wi-Fi Alliance said today's Wi-Fi speeds of 56 megabits per second maximum was set to be booted up fivefold when the new standard known as 802.11n was promulgated in mid 2007.

Once that happened, notebook PCs, even smart phones and other consumer devices could access the rich content riding on the back of wireless broadband.

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