Surf's Up

Everything seems to be showing signs of falling in place: a policy from the governmentthat gives a big push to the information technology sector, rapidly falling prices of homecomputers, Internet service providers (ISPs) rolling out their services, improvedavailability of telephones with private basic services beginning to spread. The dominantISP in the country, the public sector VSNL is being given a run for its money. Mostimportantly, V S N L is also pulling up its socks. What’s more, its effort is alreadyshowing.

For those who can afford it, the Pentium III processor could not have arrived at a moreappropriate time since V S N L has just enhanced its services and other I S Ps are in theprocess of introducing theirs. There may be just under 200,000 Internet subscribers in thecountry and the pace of growth is far out performed by several countries in the region.Says Ajoy Das Gupta, who heads business development at Satyam Infoway, India’s firstprivate sector I S P: "The demand far exceeds supply." Understandable, given thepredominant use of the Internet as a low-cost communication medium. But, "theenablers in terms of a telecom policy is missing", says Atul Kunwar, country managerof networking major 3Com Asia.

Yet, given the spread of the medium, it is indeed time to become a part of what ischanging the society in a very perceptible manner. Spread Internet will, but theprojections differ. Till the end of December 2000, VSNL sees a subscriber base of 1.4million, Indian Market Research Bureau pegs it at 690,000 while industry researcher IDCestimates subscribers to number 1.1 million. Needless to say, the estimated 1.3 millioncomputers in the country which are Internet enabled at present will have to substantiallyadd to the numbers. If nothing else, you should be hopping on to the Internet just to savethe faces of all those who have made the projections.

For the first time in the history of the country, two public sector companies arefighting a price war. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (M T N L)—the basic telephoneservices provider in Delhi and Mumbai—introduced its services in the two metros andundercut V S N L’s rates by 15 per cent. Those who have used M T N L’s serviceare euphoric as they claim that they are getting better service than V S N L’s at acheaper price. V S N L has responded with a 20 per cent discount to its subscribersrenewing their accounts for the first time and 30 per cent off for those renewing for thesecond time. And now Satyam is introducing a Rs 990-for- 2 5 -hours scheme to induce thestragglers to join the Net herd. Satyam claims to have got 15,000 subscribers in 12 citiesin the three months since it launched its service.

MTNL CMD S. Rajagopalan says that his service, now priced at Rs 8,500 for 500 hours, isup for review in another two months. "I do not see it going higher when we review theprices," he says, with a straight face. If MTNL drops prices, as it is expected todo, it will certainly be music to the ears of those who are still undecided on jumping onto the information superhighway.

A different kind of experiment is being carried out by Orissa Telecom . Having got thelicence to offer its services within the  geographical boundaries of the state, thecompany is looking into whether it can offer its services through a cable modem. If andwhen introduced , this will be the first for the country.

The till-recently monopoly ISP, V S N L, is already leaving no stone unturned inimproving the quality of its services. It has recently deployed E1 lines for routing thecalls of Internet subscribers. Put simply, E1 lines are digital lines which can handle 30callers at a time. Compared to that, the standard telephone line can handle just onesubscriber at a time. So, if Mumbai has 40,000 subscribers, it would require at least4,000 ordinary lines for an efficient service. Against that, just over 150 E1 lines willsuffice and still maintain the internationally accepted ratio of users to subscribers of1:10. The public sector behemoth has also started installing digital remote accessservers, which augments transmission speeds.

But all these improvements will come to naught if complaints like that of K.C. Rana, awest Delhi resident, are true. Rana got himself a 100-hour account in January this yearwith the idea of spending his post - retirement time on the computer. But his machine wasnot configured properly and it took him a week before he could get his vendor toreconfigure his computer. When he logged on for the first time, he had a surprise waitingfor him—27 hours had already been consumed from his account. Someone else had usedhis password and had a free ride at Rana’s expense. "Such incidents, if they arenot brought down to zero, will erode the faith of the subscriber in V S N L and help ourbusiness plans," says one I S P executive.

Still, all this won’t prevent the Net from irreversibly entering our lives.Informed sources say that Indian Airlines is working on a system to allow passengers, andothers if they wish, to find out the status of their tickets on the Internet. If oneairline were to begin this, it will not take long before others too swing into action. Asimilar idea has also been mooted for the Indian Railways, which ferries nearly 12 millionpassengers every day. As and when online payments are backed by adequate cyberlaws,booking a railway or airline ticket will not be a problem at all. Those associated withthe project say that it will take less than a year to get the system up and running.

With so many companies vying for a share in the cyber-pie, there has to be somebloodshed among the ISPs too. N. Arjun, CEO of Bharti-BT Internet, believes that fromnearly 250 ISPs in the first year, only one out of 10 will survive the third year. Likethe private airline industry, or the paging services business.

Most ISPs hope to wean away customers f rom one another by taking service to newlevels. For instance, Satyam’s service comes with an electronic security product andan Internet training module. Says Arjun, "We  will guarantee the customer a 45kbps throughput if he has the requisite modem." Brave words indeed, given the stateof the telecommunications infrastructure. But Arjun is undaunted by the task ahead priorto the launch of the services by the end of this month. The company hopes to target itsinitial efforts at Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, which account for 70 per cent ofIndia’s Internet population and 72 per cent of its computer population.

But for those not staying in the three information technology hubs of India, noteverything is bad. If you are staying at Thane in Maharashtra, there is a website whereyou can register yourself for a free e-mail service with the address as YOUR-NAME@thanecity.com. Surely, the same can be replicated with anyone from Jamshedpur to Surat andSasaram to Jamnagar.

Sites like these give people a reason to surf websites which talk about their owncommunity rather than predominantly US sites. Says Satyam Infoway’s Gupta, "Suchcommunity sites help augment Internet usage and generate and divert traffic." Hiscompany has already begun its efforts with sites like www. car-naticmusic. com, www.indiatalkies.com and www. indiaupdate.com.

While these community sites will take some time before they are fully ready, Kunwar of3Com believes that the coming summer holidays for children should be a big boom time forISPs. MTNL’s Rajagopalan has set his sights higher. "By the end of this calendaryear, we hope to have 100,000 subscribers," he says. Raja-gopalan surely would havecalculated the factor of how children influence parents’ decisions on whether anInternet account is needed for the household.

"We are on the runway, we have got the air traffic control signal and are justwaiting for take-off," is how Kunwar would like to put it. If he, like severalothers, is to be believed, surely, this is not the time to be left behind.