Wireless Rural Tushaar Kuthiala With the internet becoming an integral part of mankinds life, newer methods have

been developed to ensure its propagation across the globe. As with the switch to broadband internet access from dial-up connections, new methods, such as Wireless and satellite access have opened up new roads for communication. The internet has spread of a greater area and has penetrated into scarcely-populated regions in the developed world, through the use of new technology. The basic problem faced by wireless internet service providers (WISPs) was that, in scarcely populated areas such as villages, the revenues from providing internet access did not cover the cost of equipment used. Also, it was an extremely tedious process to ensure broadband access. With the advent of WiFi and satellite technology, the amount of hardware required was drastically reduced and internet access became cheaper and more convenient. This is the model that our service providers seek to follow in India to increase the casting area of the net. There were many technical problems with the wireless access, such as line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight propagation. However, these problems have been dealt with and similar solutions can be applied in our country. However, Indian presents its own set of complexities that must be dealt with to ensure total coverage. First, the fact remains that India is a developing country, and even the telecommunications network has not penetrated to the core of Indias villages. For wireless access to truly be effective, a large capital and labour investment will be required which experts feel is beyond the reach of any one service provider. To solve this problem, the suggestion of allowing access to other WISPs bandwidth has been mooted, to ensure a blanketed coverage. The second problem is that of the base. India has one of the slowest average broadband speeds in the world, and the greater number of wireless consumers will put a great strain on the connection. The ISPs must not be dependent on the sub-terranean cables for their bandwidth, but need to explore the full potentialities of wireless broadband, including satellites, to ensure stable and reasonably fast connections for users. This must also be balanced against the budget for the providers. The third, and greatest, obstacle to wireless internet access in rural India is the lack of compatibility with modern technology in the villages. This encompasses a host of problems such as lack of power availability, shortage of wireless enabled computers, problem of local languages etc. The solution to these problems lies in the adoption of WiMax, which promises a more efficient use of the existing bandwidth. However, the introduction of this technology has run into a few snags and is still not available in India. The question of internet connectivity in the rural areas is theoretically a simple one to answer, but the implementation is extremely complex. There are a host of factors that must be considered before we can talk of proper internet access for the villages of India.

Feedback: Well written, with a minimum of fluff. A few thoughts: Make sure you put in some figures to connect what you write with quantified reality. The number of existing broadband subscribers and the current share of wireless in the broadband market would have strengthened your arguments. You have limited yourself to the rural context, although the topic did not specify rural or urban. However, you have elaborated quite well on the commercial and technical limitations encountered in the rural context, correctly arriving at WiMAX as a promising technology for rural broadband service. However, it must be stressed that satellite broadband to the subscriber is not really cheap Third, the low speeds of Internet access we encounter may not be due to the access network, but can be a result of under-provisioning of backbone bandwidth by the ISPs. The real advantage of wireless is in terms of range of coverage in an area of low user density and access network shared by multiple users as per need. Finally, if you had chosen to write about broadband in urban areas as well, the wireless technology of choice would have been 3G cellular, but we dont know a lot about user tariffs as yet. Assessment: 6.5/10