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Access is the only thing wanting in India

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

The two-day conference on the "Technologies for the Future", being held as part of the on-going 'Bangalore IT.Com2000' five-day mega event, has come to grips with the daunting task of having access to the converging technologies and their utilities across India in the absence of a backbone for faster bandwidth.

With the problem of connectivity staring in the face of its providers and users, Prof N Balakrishnan, chairman of the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, at the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc), drew the immediate attention of the government to facilitate high-speed bandwidth with a backbone as the main infrastructure for faster and cheaper access to all.

"Though there is no dearth of computers and content provision in India, we are way behind many developing countries in the connectivity area. At a time when global companies and small nations in the West boast of giga and terra bytes per second (gbps/tbps), India, even as a single entity, is still bogged down with mega bytes per second (mbps) bandwidth," Balakrishnan lamented.

More than worrying about the technologies for or of the future, the Indian government needs to address the problem of access and connectivity as they can make or mar the future of the country, and jinx India's tryst with destiny to become a knowledge or IT superpower by 2008-10, Balakrishnan warned.

"With global transportation costs of voice, data, e-mail, etc., declining rapidly, the lack of high-speed bandwidth and connectivity in India is making access to the world outside not only cost prohibitive, but rendering us less competitive at a time when boundaries and distances are shrinking," Balakrishnan averred.

While Balakrishnan focused on the need for providing greater, faster, and cheaper access to the Indian communities while chairing the 'Access' session, Raj Shirole of Nottingham Business School and Sun Microsystems dwelt upon how access technologies were driving the global markets, including e-commerce, e-tailing, customer support, etc.

"There was a time when traditional markets used to drive technologies, and in turn the economies of the world. But Internet and wireless technologies have reversed the trend and made access not only ubiquitous, but also universal, i.e., within the reach of everyone anywhere, anytime," Shirole told about 300 geeks.

Internet and wireless technologies, in Shirole's opinion, is a social shovel that levels off everyone as it enables access to all irrespective of one's social starta Enabling access is something like making the Indian consumers buy shampoo that was made affordable and accessible by its manufacturers by selling them in small pouches instead of just bottling them.

With access technology of the wired and wireless becoming all-pervasive, it is the best thing that happened to the IT industry, and the economy as a whole as it enables every world citizen to not only communicate and exchange information, but also conduct or transact business without moving an inch.

"The domino effect of access, be it via basic/mobile phones, or the Internet on the environment and one's health is far-reaching as the connectivity minimises travelling or commuting causing enormous air pollution," Shirole affirmed.

Bridging the gap between the urgent need for access and the socio-economic benefits of connectivity through it, S D Sherlekar of the Bangalore-based Sasken Technologies, formerly Silicon Automation Systems, highlighted the advantages of the existing and emerging technologies in the access field.

The technologies developed by Sasken like ADSL will enable service providers to offer access to commercial and consumer users in diverse areas such as e-commerce, video-conferencing, Internet, entertainment, distance education, and remote medical diagnosis, to name a few.

Sherlekar also dwelt upon the emerging technologies in the access area such as third generation software products and solutions that enable connectivity for commercial and domestic purposes on real time basis at a cheaper cost.

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