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Tuesday, January 17, 2006 |
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I came in a little late into this session, so missed the moderator's opening comments. Moderator is Ajit Balakrishnan MD and CEO, rediff.com. Panelists :
Lav Gupta - BSNL What justifies multi-crore investments in broadband? VOIP does not really require broadband. For indiv users, the experience of browsing doesnít improve much with broadband. Egovernance, telemedicine, distance learning don't really need it so. Then why are we building it ??? Because we are moving to video applications - IP video, network PVR etc.We're still at the bottom of the learning curve. Tech phase to business phase, have we even really sorted out the tech phase? Lots of gaps still in the tech phase. Business phase - what does the customer want? We need to deliver services that the customer is willing to pay for. If all pieces sorted out - in both the tech and business aspects, it is predicted that India will have 26 mn broadband video customers by 2008. Content owners need wider market, service providers need new streams of revenue, government needs ways to promote eco devt, customer wants more applications, ease in use.
Ecommerce in India today is a rocking business, it is
real, it is profitable. They started
railway ticketing on the internet - between 2003 and 2005 increase was
76% in ticket sales, and 99% increase from 2005 onwards. The industry now needs to come forth and offer value to customers. What's needed to grow is greater connectivity, broadband - the better the customer experience the greater the reliability, the greater the profits. We also need more payment options - people fear cybercrime. Ends with an interesting observation - the learning period seems to be 19 months, growth very slow until then, then it takes off. Does your business also take 19 months? Sunil Buch - Reliance Web WorldWe believe broadband is the future and it is here. India will have to RAP which is --- Retail Access Points will continue to deliver significantly to access percentages. Broadband has to be fair. Want our mothers, daughters, wives, sisters to safely roam the digital highway. 105 cities with 240 reliance webworld digital destinations exist. The future is in gaming which is the 6th genre of entertainment, distance education will be a reality Sanjeev Bikchandani - Naukri.comMissed a little but he seemed to suggest that unless we get out of the English trap and get into the vernacular, the internet will never really become mass in India. Sanjay Trehan - Times Internet Raises the issue of what is broadband ?/?? Is 256 kbps broadband ? Japan in comparison has 100 mbps, Sweden 1 GB. How can we have
on-demand media or gaming when our broadband is at 256 Kbps? The
larger broadband revolution took off
because of entertainment and media industries - not just the mobile
ones. Access is not an issue, technology is pervasive but we
need compelling content. Another issue - how do we make money out of it ? What business models? Challenges - intellectual property rights, DRM. They are constantly exploring how the bank can look at new markets - new technologies, new markets. We see ourselves as facilitators of an eco-system that offers security and convenience to help entrepreneurs re-invent how payments are made. Broadband access at 256 kbps may well be enough as long as it is always on. Can we leapfrog into a system where the internet can enable customers to access service and access banking? How can the bank facilitate this - by taking a PC into the home. It can become an alternative to landline - it can alter how he behaves - the customer now can use mobile devices as his payment device.Anupam Mittal - shaadi.com How does one go about understanding broadband growth - and what applications and business models to apply - there are more questions than answers in the Indian scenario.There will be indigenous applications specific to India (eg. Gaming in Korea). The answer is not in putting up a lot of Bollywood content alone. We need customer segmentation, it is then easier to come up with business models and applications that cater to them. Also, broadband is not video but a lot of different things -how do you assess whether it makes sense to do something or not. 4 parameters :
Should we be pushing for higher speeds on broadband, or look at always-on instead? Some form of standardization may be useful - a basic minimum speed and democratizing it may be the way out. Need efficiency available to as many people as possible. How can we encourage cybercafe proliferation ? shaadi.com has assisted cybercafes for instance on the ground and they are doing so well.Digital Summit 2006 Mumbai 1:23:13 PM  comment [] trackback []
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Copyright 2009 Dina Mehta
