Senior representatives of major telecom operators such as
Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular were absent at the ISPAI-CMAI
organized broadband event in Delhi on July 20, 2011.

 

Their absence reflects in their commitment to India’s
broadband revolution. Many operators are still trying to make revenues from
their mobile business.

BSNL and MTNL together have about 70 percent market share
in broadband. This indicates that despite of having license for offering
broadband services, majority of service providers are unable to penetrate into
the market. Can our government ask private operators to come up with a road map
to launch broadband for all?

The industry was expecting the representation from big
companies at the event called next telecom revolution: broadband.”

 

Usually, we do not see the presence of two telecom
ministers in one event. But we had Milind Deora and Sachin Pilot to encourage
the audience. R Chandrasekhar, secretary of DoT and Sam Pitroda, advisor to
prime minister on public information, infrastructure & innovations were
also present. The event was attended by many industry association members.

Penetration of Internet and broadband is low in the
country, due to a limited spread of wire line telephones and non availability,
so far, of broadband technologies. Number of broadband subscribers at the end
of March 2005 was 0.18 million and it increased to 12.12 million at the end of
May 2011.

There are 105 service providers who are currently
providing broadband services. However, top ten service providers have captured
more than 95 percent of market and top 5 service providers have about 90
percent share.

By TelecomLead.com Team
[email protected]