India Telecom

October 19, 2002
Providing connectivity in rural India via corDECT

Our Correspondent

BANGALORE -- Rural connectivity is slowly becoming a reality. For example, just imagine the following scenarios in rural Karnataka:

• A telephone kiosk bundled with Internet access in a Harappanahalli, a remote village in the heart of Karnataka;
• Twenty-three-year old Gavisidappa, whose father is engaged in silkworm rearing since decades, logging on to a sericulture site to find the best way to avoid parasites attacking the worm;
• Ramakka getting a voice mail from her daughter, who was married last week to a strapping farmer from a nearby village.

All of these need not merely stay as a pure figment of imagination. If one is to take into account that there are over a 1 million people in India and less than 30 million telephones and about two million Internet connections, it does seem highly imaginative! This could become a part of hard reality with a little bit of networking - between the government, the Indian Institute of Science (IIT), Madras and a local entrepreneur from a village.

The first step has already been taken. The electronics department at IIT-Madras has developed a technology called corDECT WLL which is based on digital enhanced cordless standard specified by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). This provides a cost-effective simultaneous high-quality voice and data connectivity in both rural and urban areas.

According to Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT-Madras, who pioneered corDECT wireless technology: "This costs just about Rs 12,000 to Rs 16,000 (for sparse rural areas) to deploy. This becomes highly attractive if you take the figure of Rs 30,000 that is required to install a fixed line telephone by the DoT. The access network (the cabling and the local exchange) takes up about 70 percent of the total cost of each line, hence the high cost. Here, it is a wireless-based method." What's more, if the power goes off, which is very likely to in most villages, it has a 16-hour telephone backup and four-hour Internet backup.

The second step is now being taken. The Karnataka IT Department is taking a team that includes the IT secretary and a couple of others from the department to take a very close look at how rural connectivity works in places like Nellikuppam, villages near Madurai, where it is working in full swing.

Vivek Kulkarni, Karnataka IT Secretary, says, "We are going to study this in great detail. I like the way the professor has drawn up the comparison of a local service provider in a village with cable operators. Do remember that there were no cable TV connections in 1992. Now, there are 50 million homes with cable TV. If the same can be done - making it both affordable and on a smaller scale, we are sure that this would catch up fast." He said that the government would offer training to the uneducated and unemployed youth in the villages as well.

A local entrepreneur would have fork out about Rs 35,000-45,000 to set up a kiosk for both telephone and Internet connection. Incidentally, rural entrepreneurship loans would also be available for setting up these kiosks. Once this is through, the main hurdle would have been crossed.

However, the story does not end here. To enable Ramakka to talk to her daughter and for Gavisidappa to surf the net for the best sericulture practices, it has to be made affordable and there has to be local content and applications. The latter is not too difficult. A number of companies in India are capable of delivering local content and applications. "But making it highly affordable like the way cable TV has become right now, is in the hands of the government," adds Prof. Jhunjunwala.