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Monday, May 05, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

How everyday life comes under Net city pulse

City Bureau

The Internet has touched upon the lives of people in Chennai in ways unimaginable until a few years ago

— Photo: R. Shivaji Rao

CYBER CAFES RULE: Browsing centres such as this one operated by Sify in T. Nagar continue to be for many Chennaiites their first point of contact with the Internet.

CHENNAI: Students attend an online class by a teacher who is not even in the same continent, a surgeon at the operating table of a super-specialty hospital seeks some quick real-time guidance from an orthopaedics doyen in London and droves of eligible bachelors scan matrimony portals for a prospective bride…

The Internet has certainly touched upon the everyday lives of people in Chennai in ways unimaginable until a few years ago.

The Net, these days, touts an omnipresence across diverse spheres of the modern lifestyle and its role has morphed from merely a source of information to an interface for infotainment and social networking to education, telemedicine, e-governance or B2C engagements.

Cyber cafes rule

Though the falling prices of computers and peripherals have increased Internet penetration across homes in the city, for many Chennaiites, their first introduction to the Internet is still at a cyber café.

From small, hot and cramped rooms with four or five machines crowded together to the stylish air-conditioned cafes with webcams and gaming systems, coffee and snacks, the cyber café business is booming.

And, apart from Sify, which operates a network of cyber cafes across the city, several telecom players too have entered the broadband space offering connections and browsing suites.

There are approximately 3,000 browsing centres in the Greater Chennai region, but only one-third are officially licensed. Police estimate that only about 1,200 cyber cafes are registered with them. Internet cafes are required to maintain a registry and logbook of the users as part of police vigil against cyber crime.

Faced with police questioning over licensing and registration issues, 175 owners have banded together to form the Tamil Nadu Internet Centre Owners Welfare Association.

The association treasurer, P. Murugan, who has run the Net Tune Internet Centre in Santhome for the last 10 years, says that the number of cyber cafes has multiplied six times in the last five years.

“Earlier, the tariffs were as high as Rs. 30 to 40 per hour. Many college drop-outs and post-VRS government employees saw a big opportunity and anyone and everyone got into the business. Now the heavy competition has pushed rates down to Rs 5 and 10 and everyone is finding it hard to make profits,” he says.

At Infonetz, a small 5-machine café, the regulars range from university students who do virtually all their project work on the Internet to elderly folks dropping in for an online chat with their relatives abroad. “We help them scan pictures and use attachments, so they come to us even if they have computers at home. And of course, there are always the children,” says its owner A. Charles.

Youth and school-goers are in the thick of most of the action on the Net, ranging from gaming zones to blogs.

Education boom

The education boom in Tamil Nadu has set off a huge demand for online tutoring in the virtual universe. The sector is booming and much of the demand originated in the United States, United Kingdom, Korea and Sri Lanka, said Mahalingam Vaidyanathan, chief operating officer of Tutors Worldwide India. Online tuition is also available for fine arts, especially in Carnatic music and dance. The patrons for these courses are mostly Non Resident Indians.

An online tutor gets paid anything between Rs.10,000 to Rs.12,000 per month, based on his or her qualification.

Work from home

Another key feature of the IT revolution has been the potential for empowering the archetypal housewife forced to choose between family and job. The Net allows them to juggle both.

Leela Natarajan, for instance, trades shares online not just for the income but also for the excitement in observing the dynamics of the stock market.“On a good day, an online trader could make anything from a few thousands to maybe upto a lakh, depending on the nature of stocks purchased or sold,” Ms. Natarajan said.

Experts feel that though the Internet experience has been an exhilarating one, the future could be even more exciting. “In the days to come, speed and tariffs of Internet usage will be the chief drivers of growth”, said C. Umashankar, managing director, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu.

(With inputs from Meera Srinivasan, Priscilla Jebaraj and M. Dinesh Varma)

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