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Wireless technology connecting rural India in a big way

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

Even as the Indian IT industry grapples with the crisis arising out of the technology slowdown in the US, a silent revolution is taking place in pockets of rural India where wireless technology is making inroads to connect the populace through phone and Internet at affordable cost.

The TeNeT group of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has developed an indigenous wireless technology to provide phone and Internet connectivity in rural India where teledensity is yet to pick up on a large scale.

As a keynote speaker at the second two-day international conference on wireless Internet technologies, WAPCON 2001, which started in Bangalore on Thursday, IIT-M professor and head of the TeNeT Lab Ashok Jhunjhunwala told delegates that the corDECT wireless technology developed by the group has successfully installed the state-of-the-art facility in quite a few districts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Madya Pradesh to provide rural connectivity involving private operators.

"Wireless technology has started making a real difference in rural India as it lags behind its urban counterpart with very little connectivity for communications. With the help of non-governmental organisations and local service operators, TeNet has been able to install corDECT wireless in Local Loop to provide both telephone and Internet facilities at half the cost of basic services," Jhunjhunwala declared.

The wallset Internet Protocol (WS-IP) with 35/70kbps Internet pipes has an external antenna for enhancing the range from 10km to 25km with a repeater. The corDECT WiLL offers simultaneous phone connection, supporting fax, PCO and speaker-phone. The cost of multiwallset is Rs 7,000 with operational cost ranging between Rs 12,000 to Rs 16,000 depending on the rural reach.

"The TeNeT group's vision to provide 200 million telecom and Internet connections in India's smaller cities and towns besides rural areas. The aim is to bring down the cost of such connectivity to Rs 10,000 from the conventional Rs 30,000 per line," Jhunjhunwala stated.

During the last five years, the TeNet Lab had incubated five product companies, viz., HFCL, ECIL & ITI, Shyam Telelink, and Crompton Greaves at the institute in Madras. Apart from developing a number of access products, the development process had brought down the cost per line substantially.

As a pilot project the group's WiLL was deployed in Kuppam of Andhra Pradesh to provide telephone and Internet connections in around 65 villages. Incidentally, Kuppam is the home constituency of the Andhra Pradesh IT-savvy chief minister Chandrababu Naidu.

After successful trials and completion of the project, corDECT system has been branded as n-Logue for deployment in hundreds of small towns and rural areas across the country.

In the absence of a regulatory framework to provide license to operators in rural India, the group is targeting only 1 million subscribers with 50-100 access centres in the current fiscal year, and 2,500 such centres in the next 3 years through NGOs, government bodies, and other private agencies.

Currently, TelNet Lab is carrying a beta testing to develop a technology-cum revenue model for providing content and applications in local languages.

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