Network nirvana

It's uncanny how fact can sometimes mimic fiction. Thirteen years after Steven Spielberg's futuristic film,  'Minority  Report', let's count the technologies  in that Tom Cruise-starrer,  that have become  a reality: multi-touch screens,  motion sensing phones, retina scanners,  e-paper, insect-sized robots, face recognizing  billboards. Broadband is the buckle, which binds all these technologies and delivers them to millions of users worldwide. And 2015 seems set to be the year when the last speed blocks are removed and India joins the global race  to  achieve broadband-enhanced  living.

Consider this: All major Indian mobile providers have announced 4G services. The number of mobile phones in use has just crossed 1 billion. One in four Indians has access to the Internet. We don't have another Spielberg   film to second-guess the future, but last week in Munich, Germany, the Broadband Forum, the nodal agency driving broadband solutions worldwide, stepped into the breach and presented a 20/20 vision of a  hyper-connected  world by the year 2020.

At home, hotel or hotspot, we can expect ultra fast Net connections that reach us  by a combo of wired and wireless paths.Regardless of the device we use - PC, laptop, tablet, TV or phone , we can access the same service  anytime, anywhere. 4G will soon become history as a ten-times-faster 5G becomes standard. And something that Indians keen on paisa vasool will app-reciate the bills for all the customised tools we use  on our phones, will come not from the mobile service provider  who adds his service charge, but from the app itself, in homoeopathic doses that we can control.

(Above Image: Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh)

The  report ( 'Broadband 20/20: A new world of communication') suggests that we will increasingly  talk, with anyone in the world, even as we see each other, through Skype-like  video calling  mostly for free, while  the corporates will  continue to pay for such services from Cisco, WebEx or Citrix.  On their part the industry will go the virtual way -- after storage, and servers  moved to the cloud. The new mantra is to virtualise all  network functions. "This is an era of enormous bandwidth demand", Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh told me in a telephonic briefing from London, "We  can set the goalposts,  but we are completely neutral about the technologies that will get us there. We have embarked on a new challenge, a new opportunity and the chance to create a whole new world of communications.”

"There are many paths to God, my son," the sage Balthazar tells Ben Hur in that epic Charlton Heston film, "I hope yours will not be too difficult." Different nations have chosen different routes to a broadband future. We have to wait and see if India’s chosen path can lead us most swiftly, painlessly to telecom nirvana.

• Miles to go

Every year the UNESCO-sponsored  Broadband Commission  brings out a ‘State of Broadband’ report to explore global progress in broadband connectivity. The 2015 edition published last week  makes sobering reading for India. Her neighbours in the South Asia region, who  face similar challenges  and have comparable standards of living, have outstripped her in the  speed and spread of their broadband  penetration. India ranks no. 131 out of 189 nations with 1.2 broadband subscriptions per 100 population. Maldives heads this category in the region with  5.6; Bhutan has 3 times India's subscribers at 3.3; Sri Lanka has 2.6; Bangla Desh is same as India 1.2.

When it comes to mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 population, India ranks 156  with 5.5 subscribers.   Only Pakistan (5.1 ) is worse off. All other neighbours  have outrun India:  Maldives 48.9;   Bhutan 28.2; Nepal 17.4; Sri Lanka 13; Bangla Desh 6.4.

Ironically, some these nations that have outperformed India in the region -- like  Bhutan, Nepal and Bangla Desh are categorised by the UN as  the  50 'least developed'  nations.  Yet  they have over taken India  when  it comes to harnessing Internet. Clearly we have miles to go before we sleep.