Internet providers in the country are rapidly working to boost infrastructure in a market showing the highest growth rates in the Asia-Pacific region.

Setting up dedicated Internet gateways will enable Internet access providers to increase and improve the quality of bandwidth, or network capacity, and help attract more customers in the long run, analysts said.

"The main advantage of these gateways is that this gives us independence and direct control over the quality of service to the customer," Mr Rahul Swarup, Chief Technology Officer at Satyam Infoway Ltd, said.

The Nasdaq-listed firm has set up three satellite-based Internet gateways, as part of its plan to have 17 of these operational by the first quarter of 2001.

Mantra Online and Dishnet DSL are among those which have launched their gateways. Pacific Internet India and the Internet units of electricity firm BSES and Zee Telefilms have announced similar plans. "A lot of smaller players who can't make investments to build gateways could also shift to bigger ISPs to source bandwidth," said Mr Alok Tiku, analyst at consultancy firm, Frost & Sullivan.

The top four to five ISPs account for a lion's share or the Internet market which now has over 200 players after private ISPs were allowed about two years ago.

"Gateways will be a big competitive advantage for an ISP," said Mr Bharat Parekh, Internet analyst at DSP Merrill Lynch.

"They could offer more bandwidth and better quality and if the quality of services improve, the usage of Internet will automatically be more."

The Internet subscriber base is seen soaring to about 15 million by the end of December 2003, according to Nasscom.

But even with these growth rates, India's Internet access market will be dwarfed in Asia by giants such as Japan, China, South Korea and Australia.

Once a number of these gateways are operational, analysts expect Internet providers to roll out better quality of bandwidth in India and also boost the use of broadband services.

"These gateways will contribute to the total bandwidth coming into the country not only for Internet but also for IT-enabled services," said Mr Swaroop.

Broadband brings Internet, video, phone and other multimedia services to homes and offices at high speed. It has not caught on for a majority of Indian Internet users due to limited bandwidth and poor quality.

For many users, speed is still the biggest constraint for increased use of the Internet.

Broadband services are also getting a boost from the large investments planned by many big companies.

Firms such as Reliance Industries, Tata Electric Companies and Bharti Enterprises are wiring the country with optical fibre networks, which should boost bandwidth capacity.

VSNL has already commissioned one gigabit bandwidth capacity to cope with the rising demand.