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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ratan lal who wrote (3536)	1/22/1999 11:22:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Ratan: Thanks for that explanation,are you a Sindhi if you don't mind me asking.

To: ratan lal who wrote (3536)	1/25/1999 12:53:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

India on threshold of Internet age Ratan: From San Jose Mercury News. ===================================== Posted at 7:52 p.m. PST Saturday, January 23, 1999 NEW DELHI, Jan 24 (Reuters) - India has lifted its state monopoly on Internet services but a host of obstacles are preventing an immediate explosion of cyber activity in the country. The new private Internet service providers (ISPs) face poor telephone and personal computer penetration, constraints on domestic as well as international connectivity, little local content and a ban on offering voice services over the Internet. ''The Internet will become a phenomenon in India only in 2000. That's when I see real growth in electronic commerce and e-business,'' said Suresh Rajpal, president of Hewlett-Packard India Ltd (HWP, a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. firm. The ISPs would spend much of 1999 starting up, getting their businesses together, and developing content and commerce applications to attract subscribers, he said. ''PC penetration will also climb, and all the ingredients will be in place in a year.'' Dinesh Arora, telecommunications consultant at Pricewaterhouse Coopers Ltd, said he saw very high growth in Internet services in India between 2000 and 2005. ''1999 is the first stage of Internet development with new operators going through the learning curve, and extending their reach. Only after that will they start acquiring subscribers in large numbers,'' he said. In November 1998 India ended the three-year old Internet monopoly of state-run Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which had only 150,000 subscribers. The government allowed an unlimited number of ISPs, but many key ingredients still need to be added to the batter for the souffle to rise. For a start, India has only 19.1 million phones for a population of close to a billion. The PC population is rising rapidly -- almost a million were sold in 1998 -- but from a very low base, currently a shade over three million. All domestic transmission capacity is controlled by the Department of Telecommunications. The department is installing Internet connections between 45 cities but the first phase, linking about 40 cities, will not be ready until June. India has allowed ISPs to have their own gateways to connect to the Internet, but until they build that capacity, only VSNL can provide the international links. Demand for Internet services must also remain limited while ISPs are prohibited from offering voice services and while there are so few local-content web sites. Analysts predict that unbridled competition in Internet services will decrease subscription rates and spur the number of subscribers to 1.5 million by the end of 2000. But many feel that really strong competition will emerge only if many cable television networks offer Internet services. The cable companies, serving 25 million households, have a bigger reach than the phone system. Silicon Graphics Systems (India) Ltd (SGSIL), a unit of Silicon Graphics Inc predicts a huge growth in ISPs and subscribers through cable TV. ''If you see that there are 600,000 cable operators in India, all of which are keen to offer Internet services, even one percent of that number gives you 6,000 ISPs,'' SGSIL Managing Director Ashok Desai said. Most of the cable firms are small operators serving localities of 50 to 100 households. Desai said ISPs had a conservative view of where the market could be in two years, but SGSIL was conducting trials of cable solutions for Internet delivery at several firms. ''We are seriously optimistic about the Internet in India and have created a completely separate group to address opportunities in that business.'' mercurycenter.com