India is poised to join the rest of the world in the broadband revolution, with four companies Reliance Infocomm, Bharti Tele-Ventures, Tata Teleservices and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited committed to the broadband market, Confederation of Indian Industry (Andhra Pradesh) past president B V R Mohan Reddy said in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

Addressing the one-day conference on telecom and broadband, organised by the CII and the Andhra Pradesh government, Mohan Reddy said, "Like many nations, states, cities and communities, we are trying to accelerate the deployment and usage of broadband networks. To date, these efforts have predominantly focussed on the supply side; promoting infrastructure build-out and determining appropriate competition and regulatory policies."

Globally, broadband is picking up speed. From just over 17 million users in 2001, the number of broadband users in the world has crossed the 70 million mark.

In Korea, 57 percent of the population has a broadband connection. In China, the number of broadband users has touched five million within just one year. The Japanese broadband user base crossed 6 million within three years, he pointed out.

Analysts predict that India too can grow big on broadband. But as of now, the base of Indian broadband is not even 0.02 percent per 100 persons as against 57.5 in Korea. It is just 10 percent of total Internet users.

There are still a number of hurdles relating to regulations and technology to be sorted out, he explained, commenting on the Indian demand scenario.

Mohan Reddy, who is the chairman and managing director of Hyderabad-based Infotech Enterprises Limited, said that this scenario does not worry the telecom companies. Their immediate focus will be to get to the 60 million households, which have cable TV and the 7 million Internet users first.

He said that currently, telecom operators earned an average of about Rs 500 from each customer from VOICE.

The calculation is that this will climb by another Rs 1,000 once broadband is introduced since the consumer spends Rs 300 for cable services, Rs 500 on voice calls, Rs 600 or Internet and at least Rs 100 on video and entertainment per month.

Telecom companies offering broadband stand to pocket all this, which will make the average revenue per user from Rs 500 to Rs 1,500 per month, he added.

Referring to the Indian cost scenario, he said that consumers would not be spending more because they already pay for all these services to different operators.

In fact, consumers will have the convenience of a single billing system. For operators, there is another advantage. The churn, or the rate at which consumers shift operators, will fall because once you have taken a broad connection, the operator owns the copper wires right up to the TV or the PC. Redoing the wiring would be expensive, he pointed out.

Mohan Reddy felt that broadband would also give a fillip to fixed-line companies, which have been losing voice customers to the wireless operators. Broadband would enable fixed-line companies to use their existing infrastructure without much investment to generate additional revenues.

CII (AP) chairman G Vivekanand said that telecom networks of India and China were among the largest in the world. Broadband networks in some regions in these two economies such as Shanghai and other coastal towns of China, and Bangalore and Hyderabad in India are more developed than some parts of the industrialised world.

India's position as a global capital of outsourcing industry has been a major trigger for enhancing broadband demand in the country, he observed.

The telecom services in India have improved significantly. India operated one of the largest telecom networks in Asia and ranked fifth after China, the US, Japan and Russia, with 183.46 million telephones as on November 30, 2006, registering a 50 per cent growth, as against 125.79 million as on December 31 last year.

Tele-density per 100 population has grown from 7.04 in March 2004 to 8.95 in March 2005 and to a level of 16.28 in November 2006.

The mobile phone made its debut in the country in 1995 and number of mobile phones in the country has shot up to 100 million by June 2006, with around 5 million new customers being added on a monthly basis.

Broadband services were launched in India in 2005 and now cover about 300 Indian cities with a combined 1.5 million connections.

Andhra Pradesh Minister for Finance K Rosaiah said the state government, through various programmes and initiatives, has helped the IT and telecom industry to flourish.

The tech tie-ups, liberal policies and good and positive environment to do business has put AP on the path to progress.

Andrew Dinsley, first secretary (trade & investment), UK Trade and Investment, gave an overview of the telecom and broadband sectors in the UK. With over 8 million broadband users, UK was adding 70,000 new users per week.