- In India, where the customer is price and quality sensitive, the deployment of broadband access technology in a timely and inexpensive manner will succeed.
- Cable Internet access provides last mile reach through cable operators and can overcome the limitations of speed due to the poor quality of copper in the PSTN. However, this requires investments to upgrade existing quality of coaxial cable as well as expensive cable modems at the subscriber's end and the head-end equipment at the cable operator's end. Cost apart, the Internet over cable service has not really taken off due to the fragmented nature of this industry.
- DSL can also provide high speeds but is restricted by the refusal of fixed line players to unbundle their copper to ISPs. This leads to DSL service providers requiring to lay their own fibre, making the provisioning an expensive and a time-consuming affair.
- Provisioning of wireless broadband access can be done in a very short span of time compared to cable and DSL technologies and supports high-speed access. This is also a cost-effective solution. Satellite-based broadband services can be deployed regardless of terrain. However these are expensive technologies.
The Indian telecom sector operates in a volume-driven market. If the broadband market in India grows to meet the government's revised targets, it might spur one of the world's largest broadband wireless markets. For example, target broadband connections have been currently revised to 9 million subscribers by 2007 and 20 million 2010. Quite likely the majority of these will be wireless broadband connections because of the poor wireline infrastructure in place.
