All future buildings in the country may have to be broadband-ready, if the telecom regulator has its way. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has suggested that the government ask all municipal committees to include a clause which mandates that all new commercial and residential units have suitable internal wiring for offering broadband services.

If the government accepts Trai’s proposal, India will be going the China way where large cities such as Shanghai and Beijing have made it mandatory for all upcoming commercial and residential establishments to provide high-capacity bandwidth at the construction stage itself.

Trai has pointed out that multi-dwelling units (MDUs) in the country’s metros and large towns lack the concept of centralised infrastructure for enabling broadband connections. “A service provider has to lay cable till the subscriber’s house, which is very cumbersome and is not so cost-effective. Broadband in residential MDUs will become the next utility after gas, water and electricity.

These buildings can be made broadband-ready by internal wiring. Service providers can provide broadband service to all the occupants by connecting at single point of appropriate bandwidth to such buildings,” Trai has said in its draft recommendations on ‘Growth of broadband in India’. Trai has pointed out that many countries already have such a practice in place.

Trai’s proposal comes at a time when the country is far from achieving its broadband target of 9 million users by 2007. So far, the country has not even been able to fulfil the 3-million broadband subscribers target for 2005. The regulator, in its draft recommendations, has also pointed out that broadband uptake in the country was poor as many of its recommendations, including those on pricing of spectrum of 3G services and WiMax, were yet to be implemented by the government. 


Other possible solutions include the government enabling direct to home (DTH) operators to roll out broadband services and utilising the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund to provide subsidy for broadband rollout by telcos, Trai said.

 

Online travel firms hit the ground, literally

Clicks are not going far enough without the bricks. Online travel companies are taking the competition to the High Street. Faced with a low Internet usage and a slack penetration of credit cards, the main payment avenue for online bookings, leading online travelling companies such as Cleartrip.com, Travelguru.com, Makemytrip.com and Yatra.com are looking at setting up retail shops.

The concept had caught in places like Bangalore, and is now spreading across the nation. In Delhi, customers can walk into Makemytrip's office to make a booking, after grilling sales executives.

Yatra, an online travel portal in which Silicon Valley venture capitalist Pramod Haque is an investor, is planning to set up a shop in Gurgaon to sell holiday packages.

“I was planning a holiday in Venice and while I did all the research on the place online, but I was not comfortable in making payments online,” says Sudipta Basu, a 32-year-old executive working in a Mumbai-based business process outsourcing (BPO) unit. Finally, she decided to go to travel agent SOTC, even though the price was slightly high.

To make travel less cumbersome for people like Sudipta, online travel agents are adopting an online-offline strategy. Cleartrip has recently joined hands with Big Bazaar tycoon Kishore Biyani's Future Money to provide finance on extended monthly instalments to people who want to buy its travel products.

This facility will be made available at four Big Bazaar outlets in Mumbai. “People do not have to think twice before going for a holiday. Our plan is to make travel products affordable to the masses,” says Sandeep Murthy, Cleartrip's CEO. Cleartrip will soon extend this tie-up to other Big Bazaar outlets in the city and other metros. This facility can be used to pay for all Cleartrip’s offerings like air tickets, hotel bookings and tour packages.

SOURCE: HINDUSTAN TIMES

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