The Wired-Up Capital

WHAT if you could get onto the web with the mere flick of a switch without bothering to dial in and run up huge phone bills; what if you could surf the Net at breakneck speed on your telly; what if you could ask for a movie of your choice on the cable line and watch it at your con-venience or get your pulse or heart checked up at your doctor’s clinic sitting right in your living room; what if, in an emergency, you are assured by the police of green traffic lights throughout your journey; what if...

Are these mere figments of imagination or, perhaps, clips from a futuristic Spielberg sci- fi? None of these. You might soon be doing all these, thanks to a fibre- optic backbone that will put New Delhi in a special league of cities with a state- of- the- art communications infrastructure. The future, indeed, is knock-ing at our doorstep.

Ever since private Internet Service Pro-viders ( ISP s) were allowed in late ’98, the web in India has grown by leaps and bounds. Yet, the lack of speed and band-width stifled this boom.

All that will be history. Spectranet, pro-moted by the Punj Lloyd group, has announced a Rs 2,000- crore project to provide state- of- the- art communication, Net and multimedia services to commercial houses, institutions and even the domestic sector through India’s first convergence network. It has equity participation by Dr Naresh Trehan, director, Escorts Heart Research Centre, while Newstrack founder Madhu Trehan will develop the content for the Net and run the portal the company is setting up.

Starting off in September ’99, Spectranet has put in place a 170- km, 34- MB optical fibre backbone covering Delhi and Gurgaon in Haryana. Services from this backbone will start in March- April. On completion, the project will take the backbone across the country, covering over 40 cities in the next three years with a 64- MB capacity.

Says chairman Atul Punj: "India’s Net boom can be sustained only if we back it with better infrastructure. So we decided to set up that infrastructure and make Delhi the first truly wired- up city in the country."

A fibre- optic line offers a huge bandwidth and allows one cable to carry multiple sig- nals— video, audio, telephonic, data and Net. Then, there are no time delays, which means that signals reach targets instantly and the time usually taken to complete jobs will shrink. Also, electromagnetic disturbances often experienced in copper cabling are absent. When the backbone is on optical fibre, the possibilities are unlimited. This had to come in, says Uday Punj, managing- director, Spectranet. "The situation today is ‘e’ or die. And if you want to be e- enabled, you need the latest e- infrastructure and e- services. That’s what we want to give India," he adds.

On offer will be a host of services to which Netizens have hitherto never been exposed. These include a high- speed, always- on Net line through a cable as against the system of dial- up networking through a modem, digital video channels and movies, music and MP3 and interactive games, amongst others.

Says Atul Punj: "Until now, consumers were exposed to plain- vanilla Net products. We will add value and allow people to use the Net for specific needs. Indian Netizens have adapted themselves to the available services. The time has come for them to customise the Net to suit their needs."

FIBRE optics speed up connectivity drastically. Today, subscribers can’t get more than 28.8- 33.6 kilobytes per second ( KBPS ) connectivity even on a 64- KBPS line as telephone cables can’t carry any faster. On fibre optics, one can start at 1.5 mega bytes per second ( MBPS ) and go up to 10 MBPS , depending on receiving equipment and specific needs. Even beginners can access the Net at 256 KBPS .

Value- added services like Net radio and streaming video, including video on demand ( VOD ), will also begin soon. This means a subscriber can ask for a particular movie or his favourite number at his convenience and pay for the same on a pay- per- view system. The best part: you don’t need a computer for surfing as the cable line and your telly will suffice. All you need is a settop box and a cordless keyboard. Spectranet promises a lot else, including high- speed links between set locations for large corporates along with high- speed Internet, Intranet and Extranet access. Data centre  services for disaster recovery and roaming  access will also be available. A plan to allot 10 MB of disk space to connect schools with homes is also being worked on so that children can learn from home.

Spectranet is also working on a e- medicine or tele- medicine service wherein a subscriber, with the help of basic gadgets, can connect to his doctor and get his pulse, heart,blood pressure and other clinical check- ups done from home. Similar services are offered by others but over phone lines. On fibre optics, it’s faster and accurate. A project is also on with the Delhi government to introduce computerised traffic lights control in the city. This, company officials claim, will ensure a decongested traffic flow. The novelty will be off- site application hosting which will allow subscribers to rent a particular application for a limited use in his computer simply by accessing it from the host server. Translated, it means you needn’t have even MS Word on your PC. You can hire it off the service provider for a couple of hours, finish your work and just pay for that period of usage.

The Internet made the concept of a global village a reality. Optical fibre technology has shrunk the world further. In Star Trek , the captain of Enterprise travelled through galaxies by just saying: "Energise..." Technology has brought us within sniffing distance of that possibility.