HOW TECHNOLOGY WILL CHANGE TOMMOROW'S WORLD

Speaking at the international advertising convention, 'Future Shock', Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Head of the Department, Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, threw up questions on the impact of technology on Indian lifestyle and how far the new technology has reached the masses.

In India, the 90s saw rapid enhancement in Telecom and Information Technology. The impact will be even more dramatic in the coming decade. What can be expected from technology? Backbone network, access while on move, access while at home and office and user interfaces. In this scenario, the key Indian imperatives are affordability and market penetration levels. The biggest impact of technology in the Indian household was brought about by black and white television. Then came colour television and then digital television. From terrestrial broadcast we moved on to satellite broadcast, then to cable television and now we are talking about Direct-to-home (DTH). But all this is one-way communication. Soon we can look forward to video on demand, video specially edited for a group, video-based newspapers and newsletters, content-based retrieval and play (MPEG 7 and MPEG 21). We are essentially talking about access while on the move, access at homes and offices. It could be through your personal computer, television, car screen or mobile phone. Which means connected homes, offices and the world.

What will make this possible?

1. Optical backbone networks.
2. Getting the fibre within a KM of urban homes.
3. Bringing terabit per second capacity to street corners.

India has 1,000 million people and 180 million households, but what is the market size and affordability? India has 30 million telephones and two million internet connections. In 1992, there were no cable TV connections in Indian homes, but today 40 million homes have cable connections, while 80 million homes have television. What has made cable and TV affordable in India? Firstly cable TV charges are anywhere between Rs 60/- to Rs 150/- per month, whereas in the US, its $ 15. Secondly, innovative buy-back schemes have made possible widespread use of second hand television. A black and white TV is available at Rs 1,200/- in rural areas, and is affordable to 60% of Indian households. Cable TV operators use a dish antenna and cable to serve in about 700 m radius. And their operation cost is about a third of that of the corporate sector. So, the benefit of lower operation cost is passed on to the customer.

Telecom affordability for Indian households

But the afforesaid scenario is not the same for telephone and internet. Telephones cost about Rs 32,000/- per line to install, requires Rs 12,000/- per year or Rs 1,000/- per month, which is not affordable to more than 2 to 3% of households. Telecom and internet in developed countries costs $ 900 to $ 1000 per line, it requires $ 350 per line per year to service. It is affordable to over 90% of households in the west. R&D focus there shifts from cost reduction to enhancing the basket of services. In India our task becomes more of how to use R & D to bring down the costs. Technology developed for the western market is affordable only in the west. Its affordable to only 1 to 5% of people in developing countries.

Technology is making a major impact on our lifestyle, but will it change all the 1,000 million homes in India? The R & D task for developing nations is that the cost of the product needs to be brought down by a factor of 3 to 5. By doing so we can not only bring down costs, but will also become technology leaders.

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