Summary

India has 80 million cable homes and would be 100 million by 2010. CAS introduction has been decided by the Govt which would result into two way digitalization of cable ready to bring broad band to homes. All telcos, CMSPs and MSOs are expanding their network through fiber for long and mid haul. There is a need for the regulator to introduce authorizations for interconnect between telcos/CMSPs/MSOs network and Local Cable Operators (LCOs) access network to homes. This might happen soon and then with very low fixed and operating costs, the return on investment in companies going for such home multi play offering will  be huge.

Analysis

There will be 100 million cable homes by 2010 served by around 80, 000 Local Cable Operators (LCOs) each having access to an average of 1200 cable homes. Govt has declared India to be all digital TV country by 2012. Introduction of CAS in the country is a step to achieve TV digitalization.

Telcos, CMSPs and MSOs are continuously expanding the reach of their core and edge networks with deeper and deeper fiberization. These service providers today are in a position to originate and carry the broad band signals as a long and mid hauls. LCOs are already ready with access to homes and with very slight upgrade in their network needed for CAS, can deliver these signals to homes. What is missing is a regulatory framework to interconnect these two networks. Therefore, taking the lessons from telecom where interconnect regime has been successfully put in place, same needs to be done for broad band on cable to beat the story of world’s highest growth of mobile subscribers for broad band subscribers and further improve the economy in shortest time.

India has successfully started reaping the benefits of immense contribution of mobile telephony to its GDP, the broad band boom will even surpass these achievements and take the GDP to more than 10 %. Therefore, one decision of regulating this interconnect will contribute immensely to health, education, medical and local self governance needs necessary to ensure that massive investment in infrastructure yields quicker returns. If voice and internet charges can be fixed for origination, carriage and distribution and it is made mandatory for both service providers and LCOs to abide by the interconnect clauses where by neither will disconnect service to the subscribers and face penalty like losing license or registration then India will have the largest broad band subscribers in the world at least cost, least tariffs and in shortest possible time. Such a regulatory regime will bring Verizon(NYS:VZ) and Comcast(NMS:CMCSK) like multi play service offering to 100 million cable homes the way cable TV service has self proliferated in India.