NLD/DLD
The Long Distance Bonanza

The Commodity of Bandwidth
With the popularization of the Internet—multimedia not far behind as the trends indicate-—users want not only seamless connectivity, but also growing amount of capacity. And capacity with quality—in operators’ perspective, free of delays—also known as
latency. Availability of 99.95 percent or more being an absolute must. Unbelievable! No,
it is most happening today. And at very competitive prices. These are the fruits of
competition!

TRAI…on dot
TRAI—rated among the top five regulators in Asia by ‘Telecom Asia’—has shown its usual efficiency in releasing an exhaustive consultative paper to the public on the introduction of competition in DLD. That too within four months of release of NPT ’99. The paper gives a real insight into the DLD business offering good amount of data to build a business plan. TRAI is striving to release the guidelines by October. It is most likely that the deadlines would be met. Touch wood! Already there are thoughts of advancing opening of international telephony by two years to 2002.

The Right Way
Going by the experience of basic and cellular operators, "right-of-way" is the operators’ nightmare. It is heartening to see organizations in Railways, Power and Oil and Gas sectors having initiated steps for use of their infrastructure and "right-of-way" for DLD. Indian Railways alone lays around 1,000 kilometers of optical fibre each year. A very important step is the Build-Own-Operate-and-Lease (BOOL) tender by IRCOT of Indian Railways to auction its "right of way"—on regional basis—for operators to lay their optical fibre cable, with some capacity reserved for Railways. Undoubtedly very well timed. Another Railway organization, IRCON, is already laying fibre on the Delhi-Mumbai route. Power Grid Corporation has 35,000 circuit kilometers of transmission lines. The prospective operators need to exploit all these resources for a fast roll out.

The New Numbers
It is even more important because it is very difficult for any single player to raise the kind of resources required. The Railways realized it fast enough, and they need efficient telecom too—employing state-of-the-art technologies. The project cost estimates are running into thousands of crore of rupees. The world had barely learnt the Indian numbers of lakhs and crores…we now may do it with arabs (100 crore) and kharabs (100 arab).

Bundling of Services
The days of plain conventional local and long distance voice are believed to be numbered. The customers, especially the business segment, want high-speed data/Internet access, transparent LAN services, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), many other value-added/IN services, and Voice over IP (VoIP)…the last one not yet allowed in India. And all in one bill. There is a growing realization that even VoIP cannot be policed and stopped.

Technology Will Rule the Business
Fibre-optics is today the preferred technology not only because it offers immunity from electrical interference and better quality, but because it offers almost unlimited capacity. And that implies lower pricing as the volumes go up. There is growing realization even in India about the potential of VoIP. Though initially with a lower quality, it will be far cheaper and is bound to have serious implications for long distance business. Soon it will be connection-less end-to-end IP, IP-over-SDH or Packet-over-SDH (PoS), to be followed by even faster technologies. An operator has to take into account this pace of technological development in his business strategy. To be able to exploit growth in traffic and remain competitive. And to remain ahead! Whatever technology one deploys, it should take care of bandwidth hungry applications like e-commerce, video-on-demand that will throw great opportunities for all of us, including for Ramdin Chacha.

The Technology-Savvy Chacha
Many well wishers want to know the latest about Ramdin Chacha (last seen in "Distance Learning"). How is he adapting to the technological changes? Our technology-savvy Chacha, as usual, is ahead of the times. His PC and the Internet have given him the necessary reach and have transformed his political and professional life. And he too wants to be able to meet Madhuri Dixit…as and when he wishes! 

By Niraj K.Gupta, published in Voice and Data, September 1999.