Wireless is the key. Copper connectivity – the traditional land line business took many decades to reach 40 million subscribers, while it took less than 10 years for mobile connectivity to connect 200 million subscribers.

Once the network is installed the cost of adding new subscribers is very cheap in wireless business. Right now, we have only 4 million broadband subscribers while only about 40 million use internet. Those numbers will go up dramatically once wireless connectivity kicks off.

India should take fast decisions on frequency allocation and policy making to remove ambiguity and doubts in the minds of service providers, investors and banks, etc.

India should encourage more small firms to come up. India needs to decrease the barrier-to-entry for startups, dole out more incentives to small firms to set up businesses. The key to a vibrant economy is having thousands of startups.

How do you see the growth of 3G,WiMAX in India?

3G and WiMAX have a great potential in India. To start with, 3G spectrum will be used as additional frequency for voice applications. It will take few years before data services will pick up in India.

It's hard to speculate but once the pricing for high throughput services drops and if we get interesting applications to suit Indian audience – something like live cricket, we may see a sudden change where more and more users move to data services.

WiMAX will have a significant role to play in India. Some analysts predict that India will be one of the biggest markets for WiMAX. India has only 4 million broadband subscribers.

This number is not going to increase dramatically because copper wire connectivity is limited, DSL cannot reach all homes, cable connectivity is in the hands of unconsolidated players.

Wireless will the key driver, the way mobile revolution took place in India giving a cell phone to one out of every four Indians. WiMAX is the best suited wireless technology and standard to provide broadband to homes, offices, enterprises, etc. Also, WiMAX links can replace the current microwave backhaul to connect cellular towers – this is going to be a major application.

Image: A semiconductor chip designer inspects a computer chip at the Indian unit of Texas Instruments Inc in Bangalore. | Photograph: Savita Kirloskar/Reuters

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