Long Trek To Cyber Pass

DON'T pop the champagne yet. It's still a long way to India's bus-stop on the information superhighway. For 70,000-odd Indians, it may already be the Utopia of free and fast interactive global communication. But amidst all the hype, the glitches on the Internet are being glossed over by the mandarins in Sanchar Bhavan.

Inadequate bandwidth (in lay terms, the width of the roads leading up to the superhighway) and the poor state of India's telephone lines make access to the World Wide Web—the most advanced browsing and searching system on the Net—a test of patience and endurance. Confesses Brijendra K. Syngal, chairman and managing director of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL): "Apart from availability of inexpensive hardware like modems, good quality telephone lines would be critical for the growth of Internet in India."

Web congestion—traffic jams on the roads to the Web—and the painfully long time it takes to download files, graphics, sound and video are common complaints among Indian Internet users. Add to that the acrimony between the three government agencies which are offering Web access, and the netscape begins to look rather depressing.

Dr N. Seshagiri, director general of the National Informatics Centre (NIC)—which offers its NICNET service to 2,000 organisations at present—admits that India has a long way to go before Internet users can drink from the open-house pubs on the information superhighway. With the poorbandwidth, clogging is a major problem, he says. In agreement is S. Ramakrishnan, director, Educational Research Network (ERNET), Department of Electronics (DoE), the first to provide Internet services in India way back in February 1989.

 "There are certain areas where improvements are required," says Syngal. "These include the number of access lines and end-user support." He claims that action has already been taken to resolve "these glitches and we do not expect them to be limiting factors for the growth of Internet." Experts and officials of DoE and NIC, however, think otherwise.

The bandwidth for dial-up access to Internet from a home telephone fitted with a modem varies between 2.4 kilobits per second (kbps) to 9.6 kbps, touching at the most 14.4 kbps. For leased access (thatis, a hotline for exclusive use), the maximum bandwidth offered is 64 kbps. A bandwidth of 128 kbps is given on special request. These piffling bandwidths make netsurfing akin to negotiating a six-tonne truck through the bylanes of Benares.

Ramakrishnan points out that the world over, bandwidth varies between 1.5 megabits per second (mbps; 1 megabit=1,000 kilobits) to 45 mbps in some countries, and between 2.048 mbps to 34 mbps in others. China, which hooked up on Internet later than India, offers a 2.048 mbps bandwidth.

For efficient Internet services, however, Ramakri-shnan recommends a national backbone network—a grid of high-speed infobahns—with a bandwidth of at least 34 mbps. Seshagiri adds that an external capacity of 40 mbps bandwidth would be the best bet to "satisfy the citizenry's and commercial entities' desire for quality Internet services". Around the world, each country has at least one backbone network that operates at very high speed and carries the bulk of the traffic. Other smaller networks connect to that backbone. But such a backbone network of 34 to 40 mbps for India is still a distant dream.

 By March, DoE plans toup bandwidth to 2 mbps. The NIC hopes to go to 8 mbps by May. The VSNL, which launched its Internet services on Independence Day, talks about a 2x2 mbps network connectivity in a year's time. But compare this to the 500 mbps bandwidthof the US, Singapore and Australia, and India's march on to the information superhighway begins resembling an infant's attempts to walk.

However, despite the bottlenecks and infra-structural problems, the VSNL, the NIC and DoE have great expectations about plugging India onto the Net.

The VSNL has 2,000 sub-scribers as of date, and has set a target of 20,000 by December next year, 50,000 by 1997-end, to touch one lakh Internet connections in 1998. The NIC is even more ambitious. Seshagiri expects subscriptions to multiply fifty times to hit the one lakh mark by 1996-end. "We see a potential for one million Internet users on ERNET," says DoE's Ramakrishnan. "This is, of course, subject to good infrastructure." The world over, Internet users have been growing at an average rate of above 100 per cent a year, he notes. India is expected to record the same pace of growth, if the bandwidth problem is addressed, he says.

 But if India is lagging behind on the quantity side of the spread of the Net, the news is not much better on the quality side too. A very large majority of Indian Internet surfers use it only to send and receive E-mail, or play games, which is gross under utilisation of the supernet-work. When not using the Net as a courier service or an amusement arcade, Indian users do more of browsing than interactive networking. "This reactive approach is wrong and there should be more focused use for best benefits," feels Ramakrishnan. For, the Internet allows you to bring an idea to the table, research all relevant material, brainstorm with experts around the world, and cut time required to create, develop and innovate manifold.

Syngal says that though individuals are the largest subscribers to the VSNL's Internet services, there is also considerable interest among corporates. "We expect the pattern to change considerably towards a wider usage in all sectors," he adds. Major clients of NICNET and ERNET include exporters, R&D organisations (both public and private), medical and educational institutions, government organisations and NGOs. Only 10 per cent of the users comprise individuals.

High costs are keeping out the students, a section which could have possibly got the most out of the Net. Though the VSNL has exempted students from payment of any registration fee, the initial investment works out to Rs 1 lakh: a 486 DX computer with an 8 MB RAM, a telephone connection, a modem and a multimedia kit. And the VSNL's apparently nominal annual tariff of Rs 500 for students is for a bandwidth of 2.4 kbps. Users looking for Web options should have a data rate of at least 9.6 kbps, say experts. However, for this bandwidth, the VSNL charges shoot up to Rs 15,000 a year, with a ceiling of 250 hours of Internet use.

The problem is compounded by the brewing animosity among the VSNL, NIC and DoE. The NICand DoE have been offering Internet services principally for promotional and educationalpurposes, while the VSNL is in for clear commercial reasons. As a result, the NICNET andERNET charges are much lower than the VSNL’s.

For non-student non-commercial users, the VSNL charges a registration fee of Rs 1,000for dial-up access, while for leased subscribers the amount is hiked up to Rs 10,000. TheERNET levies no registration fee. For leased-line commercial usage, the VSNL’s annualtariff varies from Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, depending on the bandwidth and the businessyou are in. In contrast, DoE charges Rs 1 lakh for leased analogue lines, which goes up toRs 3 lakh for digital lines. The NIC’s charges too are far cheaper than theVSNL’s.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that officials of both the NIC and DoEhave recently been complaining of restrictions and regulatory problems, supposedlyinspired by the VSNL. "We provided Internet connections to commercial organisationsinitially, but subsequently put a freeze on this sector following instructions from theDepartment of Telecommunications (DoT) to lay off," says Ramakrishnan.

As a senior official says on condition of anonymity: "The Internet is not owned byanybody, but the VSNL behaves as if the information superhighway belongs to them." Ifthe spirit of Internet is claimed to be that of untramelled ultrademocratic freedom, thisdispute militates against the Web’s very raison d’etre.