Wireless Broadband – A New Opportunity for Channels

While India is far behind in terms of planned penetration levels of broadband, increasing usage has enabled various applications and services to be delivered over broadband. Mobile security and public hotspots are potential opportunities to leverage for channels and system integrators.  Wireless broadband data cards are also making the spectrum complete.  In short, there is a huge potential for consumers, application developers and channels to leverage the increasing growth and usage of Wireless broadband.

Network access has evolved over the last few years.  The main thing about the evolution is the applications that have enabled better human lives, and instant transactions.  However, India was far behind the national broadband target of 20 million connections by 2010, set by the Indian government in its Broadband Policy 2004 and even at that pace, it was to have achieved the target only by 2014.  The report on the present progress is yet to be computed.  While this may not be a big achievement, it certainly is a big opportunity for smaller network service companies.  They or channel partners for broadband providers should look at this as an opportunity, says Krishna KV, channel partner for Sify, selling broadband services in Chennai and north Tamil Nadu.

“There are two types of broadband- DSL and data cards, like the 3G broadband based on CDMA and 3G technologies.  One in 3 users are using broadband, and the rest through connect through mobile,” he says.  Therefore, with a base of 700 million users, we are looking at 214 million broadband connections.  Mahalingam R, an independent consultant for the Government of Tamil Nadu says that Broadband applications are broadly classified into five categories – Education, health, agriculture, E-governance and other Government programs.  In each of these programs, the rural point of connect – rural centres, service centres, health centres etc., are key points where broadband connectivity has to reach.  This is the single biggest investment of broadband.

The other major users are small and micro enterprises, and public access – like Sify”s own iWay, or other Internet Cafés. Krishna’s major source of income, almost 68%, is from small and medium enterprises, he says.  The next set is from educational institutions.  “The biggest challenge for me comes from the 3G and CDMA service providers like Airtel and Reliance,” he says.  “The cost of aggregated broadband – a wireless router with an ADSL connection is the standard feature in most enterprise and household installations.  This means that multiple devices can use the same connection, although the bandwidth is shared.  This has resulted in tablets, mobile devices competing for the same network space that PC”s used to have.  This is a unique convergence,” he adds.

With Wi-fi coming in, the traditional 3D and CDMA data network businesses are affected. Mahalingam explains, “people use Wi-fi for downloads and high volume data mobility, while the traditional 3G on phones are used for low volume transactions.  So, between smart devices and personal computers, the load that broad band carries is a major portion of the traffic in this country.”

While consulting on government projects, Mahalingam says that the question comes in terms of configuring security in broadband.  The ADSL routers double as the local firewalls; and thereby preventing any basic attacks.  However, it is important that security is a major aspects in the connections.  Wireless uses clear text passwords and hence should have limited “Keep Alive” time he opines.  And this is a big challenge for commercial and house hold enterprises. Hence password protection is the single biggest challenge he says.  Most broadband connections are vulnerable.

Krishna says, “I agree, especially considering that mobile and e-commerce, and other transactions happen over these very same network as other things like social media.  More and more consumers get to Internet for various applications – basic services, utility services, bill payments, business and individual transactions, it becomes more and more imperative that there is lot of virtual money flowing as bytes” he says.  Mahalingam agrees, safety is a major consideration, since going forward, terrorism can come in any form, and online security threats are yet another form. This one can really be potentially damaging for individuals, businesses, and for the economy of the country as a whole.

“Customers don’t want to be disturbed by security questions, so we generally have medium security profiles enabled,” Krishna clarifies,” so that there is at least reasonable protection.  Changing of passwords frequently is recommended.  In short, security awareness is key as the trend is to use more and more wireless broadband as the medium for commercial transactions.”

Mahalingam points out that with city administration moving fast on creating wi-fi hotspots across India, the utilization of broadband is going to grow. What does that mean? One can walk into a hot spot in a public place, and still be connected on high speed Internet.  This is a major urbanization step.  There will be two types of access, Mahalingam says, one will be basic, hence free, and another one with access to more services but charged reasonably.  Connaught place in Delhi is now a live example, he points out.

More and more applications will gain traction because of this. While standard universal will be provided based on the local needs (around the hotspot), the service provider would take a call to allow the quantum of access, Mahalingam says.

Krishna says that Wi-fi hotspots by nature have limited coverage.  This means that people will have to hop in between Wi-fi hotspots and will be encountering limited mobility.  To change this, data cards can come handy.  Earlier offering a few Kbps data, they now offer 4 Mbps and more.  Earlier they used to serve only one device, especially a laptop or a portable device and connected to the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, but now it can be used as wireless device as well. This means one can create mobile hotspots, the latest trend in a bandwidth hungry country.

While these technologies offer new revenue opportunities to telecom service providers, there is a major loss of voice services.  Applications like Skype, viber etc., have enabled long distance calling and video calling possible, and that too without any cost.  The voice packets travel as data through the internet enabling this possible.  Applications have grown to enable reasonable quality of service ( QoS) and the quality of voice / video has improved.

YouTube has become the second most high traffic search engine, says Krishna.  Usage of video search will increase.  This will result in the need for better reach and high quality bandwidth among consumers.  The tech savvy young generation Y loves to watch movies online,   especially connecting their smart Televisions to broadband.  Smart TV’s with higher resolution and with interactive capability will be the next big thing in terms of popular consumerism, says Krishna.  Mahalingam adds that Google in particular has shown interest in investing in digital broadband and is in initial tasks with the Indian Government.

Both ADSL and Mobile broadband are here to stay.  Adding wireless in this, both at consumer, household and organization level, will only improve leverage of Internet more and more.   Channel service providers can look at wireless broadband security, public hot spots as some of the opportunities in the new trends of broadband connectivity.