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New Delhi (pte041/17.01.2005/16:00) - India's government-run telecom giants have launched what they describe as the world's cheapest broadband services. As the Tehran Times http://www.tehrantimes.com reports, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) http://www.mtnl.net.in and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) http://www.bsnl.co.in are offering existing fixed-line customers a 256 kb per second broadband connection for 500 rupees (8.77 euros) per month. New customers will have to pay an initial deposit of 2,000 rupees (35.08 euros) for a new telephone connection.
"We have been slow to adapt new technologies in the television and even Internet sphere but in a way this will now work in our favour," said Dayanidhi Maran, IT and Communication Minister, at a press conference. "Indian firms will bring the best technologies into the country at the cheapest prices. The need of the hour is high-speed Internet and our state-run communications firms will provide the service for voice, data transmission and video at a minimum speed of 256 kilobytes per second and up to the highest speed of 20 megabytes per second," he added.
According to R.S.P Sinha, the head of MTNL, the company would first provide 170,000 high-speed connections to customers in New Delhi and the country's commercial capital, Bombay. "We can only provide 170,000 connections up to April 2005. But we have planned to expand the project to reach a capacity of around 250,000 by the end of this year," Sinha said. BSNL, which launched the service in Hyderabad, Calcutta, Madras and Bangalore, said it expected 300,000 new customers to sign up for the broadband service.
Although India is a global software hub and has a billion-plus population, only 0.4 per cent of people there use the Internet, with only 0.02 per cent using broadband. "We have set a target of having three million broadband and six million Internet dial up users in the country by the end of this year," said Shakeel Ahmad, Junior IT and Communications Minister. The Indian government expects 40 million Internet subscribers and 20 million broadband subscribers by the end of 2010.
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