Broadband
Bridging the Digital Divide

It’s worrisome that very little attention is being paid to broadband in India.

Highlights

l Today, providing POTs is not enough for bridging digital divide

l We need to seriously explore broadband options like xDSL, CATV, and WiFi

The theme of this year’s World Telecommunication Day “Empowering People To Cross The Digital Divide” brought back focus on digital divide.

Telecom is supposed to provide the bridge to cross the digital divide. There is a lot of talk, but a lot more needs to be done to bring the benefits of ‘digital opportunity’ to the people.

Also, to be part of the emerging global ‘information society’, it is not enough any more to just provide POTs to all. We also need to provide access to the Internet, and today, at broadband speed because of the nature of interactive multimedia content. And to combine the access to POTs as well as broadband the fastest approach used in most of the countries is through local loop unbundling (LLU).

LLU for Broadband

LLU has long been feted by as a way out of the stranglehold of incumbent telcos on telephone lines and Internet services. It promotes competition and fosters growth of broadband.

LLU is expected to make the incumbent operator’s local network available to other operators/service providers who are then able to use DSL technology to offer broadband as well as services on high-speed Internet access to the customer.

Sub-Loop unbundling

The European Union (EU) Regulation on LLU requires incumbents to offer shared access (or line sharing). Line sharing enables operators and the incumbent to share the same line, thus fostering competition with more choice for consumers. Consumers can acquire ‘data services’ from an operator while retaining the ‘voice services’ of the incumbent. Some operators may choose to offer data services only, so with line sharing, consumers can retain the incumbent’s service for voice calls while getting higher bandwidth services from another operator without needing to install a second line.

The EU Regulation also requires that other operators can interconnect with the local access network at a point between the incumbent’s site and the end user. This arrangement is referred to as ‘sub-loop unbundling’. Sub-loop unbundling can be used for emerging technologies such as VDSL where the equipment needs to be much closer to the home to deliver very high bandwidth services. An optical fiber would deliver high-speed services to the local green cabinet and VDSL used to send them along the copper pair to the consumer’s premises.

Indian Scenario

In India, the reason given for not taking up LLU issue is that the ‘local loop’ is in deficit i.e. the copper pairs are all used up and not available for sharing. However, we have to consider optimum utilization of non-voice spectrum on the copper pair for DSL application through whatever regulatory policies it may be feasible. We may have to soon make serious effort for broadband with options like xDSL, CATV, and WiFi (802.11b).

The experience worldwide—in Europe, US and Asian countries like Korea—has shown that the success of broadband depends not only on the cooperation of incumbents but also on their active participation. As broadband content-based services become key revenue drivers—in a falling ARPU scenario—such participation should happen. That will ensure that the digital divide does not increase at broadband speed.

By Niraj K. Gupta, "from my cell", Voice & Data, June 2002