Indian DoT To Set Up National Backbone

["Irfan Khan" <KhanIA@super.net.pk>]

Indian DoT To Set Up National Backbone 

By Uday Lal Pai
InternetNews India Correspondent 

[July 23, 1999--MUMBAI] The department of telecom (DoT), India's 
monopoly telecom player, will establish its own Internet backbone, 
crossing the entire Indian sub-continent within six months! 

The Telecom Commission of India has set January 26, 2000 as deadline 
for setting up Internet access nodes at every district in India. 

The project cost for the national Internet infrastructure is 
estimated to the tune of $ 100 million. The DoT has the basic network 
in place. "The DoT has plans to set up its own backbone covering 
nearly 45 cities in the first phase." says N.Parameswaran, Deputy 
Director-General, DoT. 

The backbone will carry Internet traffic and function as an 
integrated facility for traffic and network management. According to 
Parameswaran, DoT has to increase the bandwidth and other facilities 
for easy Internet access and the entire project would be completed in 
a year. 

According to sources, DoT plans to set up five international gateways 
in India's mega metros - New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta and 
Bangalore - with 34 Mbps connectivity in the first instance. DoT 
launched Internet services last year and now is operating Internet 
nodes in 54 areas. It has a customer base of nearly 50,000 
subscribers. 

The national Internet backbone would mainly help the ISPs in the 
smaller cities, said Parameswaran, Out of 132 ISP licenses issued 
till date, 67 were for the smaller cities. 

However, skeptics are not convinced about DoT's newfound helpful 
tendency. DoT's plan may be to continue with its monopoly practices, 
they fear. Since all ISPs will have to access the DoT (or its 
offshoot Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited [MTNL]) network at some 
point of time or other for providing their services, a huge charge 
DoT may charge will have a direct effect on their cost of operations. 

But DoT sources say that the backbone infrastructure would supplement 
the efforts of the private ISPs, eventually creating an effective and 
easy connectivity for the subscribers. 

The biggest issue affecting ISPs is lack of bandwidth availability. 
As they are completely dependent on DoT and MTNL for PTSN, ISDN and 
E1/R2 lines, many ISPs have not been able to start services even 
several months after schedule. 

The ISDN and E1/R2 lines are not easily available everywhere in the 
country and their pricing has been open to different interpretations 
by the ISP and local telecom authorities in different cities. 

Similarly, for the availability of long-distance lease lines, certain 
ISPs have bitterly complained of being made to run from pillar to 
post by the circle officers. The monopoly practices of DoT officials 
may continue in small cities fear tiny ISPs. 

According to sources in DoT, work on the implementation of the 
national backbone was proceeding as scheduled. The tenders for 
equipment procurement have been finalized and advance purchase orders 
have been placed. Heads of telecom circles have been authorized to 
get equipment for setting up nodes at every district. 

DoT also offered the ISPs to consider their request to allow using 
wireless in local loop (WLL) technology to provide connection between 
internet users and their control centers. 

http://asia.internet.com/1999/7/2304-india.html