eGov-July-2006-[9-18]-India bracing for a long haul

C O V E R

S T O R Y Telecom & Wireless TTechnologies echnologies

India bracing for a long haul Danish A. Khan and Anuradha Dhar

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irst came the sprawling network of bright yellow ‘STD/PCO’ phone booths across the country, which helped connect people of India thereby providing instant employment to millions, even in the far-flung regions and remotest corners. Sam Pitroda, great visionary and technocrat, realised the importance of connectivity and a ‘wired’ India two decades ago. It was he who brought telecom revolution in the country.

Next came the era of cellular phones.

Mobile telephony made advent in India in 1995. It took three years to cross the one million mark in 1998. It crossed three million in 2000, five million in 2001, 10 million in 2002 and finally, 50 million in early 2005. Though the earlier perception was that mobiles would be for the rich and strictly an urban phenomenon, it did not take much time to prove otherwise. | July 2006

The kind of direct impact mobile phones has on the economic and social lives of the poor is profound. Today, we hear stories of villagers selling their products or knowing the latest market price of agricultural commodity through mobile.

From stringent government monopoly, Indian telecom market has now become vibrant with multiple players and stiff competition. According to a June 2005 study paper of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India is one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world. The telecom industry is developing the fastest among all sectors in the country. India has crossed 100 million telephone connections, which puts India as the fifth largest telephone population in the world, after China, USA, Japan and Germany.

As such, GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) mobile

communication is currently in the leading position in the development of telecom market. In the past five years, the number of GSM handset users has increased tenfold. The next few years is likely to see a dramatic expansion in the number of handset subscribers with the growth rate of more than 50%. It is expected that by 2008, there would be some 200 million GSM users, accounting for 75% of all telecom subscribers.

Insofar as the growth of wireless technology in India is concerned, there has been a consistent increase over the years. There is no gainsaying the fact that wireless technologies represent a rapidly emerging area of growth and importance for providing ubiquitous access.

Undoubtedly so, India today surpasses several big countries worldwide in terms of possessing world-class wireless networks. A single standard — GSM 900 9

— covers the entire length and breadth of the country thus providing unique benefits for telecom operators to support countrywide mobility.

Telecom Market status The current market status for the telecom industry in India by all accounts depicts quite a promising future. As on 13th April 2005, of the estimated 100.27 million total telephone connections in India, there were close to 53.94 million mobile connections and 46.33 million fixed line connections thereby showing that the number of phones (fixed and cellular) per 100 population stood at 9.13%. Further, mobile phone sector is bracing to overtake the fixed-line sector in a big way.

Almost 60,000 new mobile connections are being added daily. Notably, telecom companies have anticipated the number would become three-fold in the next two years.

Announcing the plans for the telecom industry, Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, declared that by 2007 India would be carpeted by telecom network and all the villages connected by phone. The country would have 250 million telephones and the teledensity would be about 22%. There is a tremendous potential to expand telecom network in the country since the teledensity as of now is pegged at only about 13.02% against over 100% in the 10

US, Japan and Germany. At the current rate India is expected to surpass the developed countries in the next 4-5 years, where the demand has already saturated.

As also in terms of having a subscriber base, India is also far behind its neighbour China, which has the largest subscriber base of more than 600 million. To give a boost to the telecom industry, the Government of India (GoI) recently raised the limit for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in telecom companies from 49% to 74%. The GoI expects to raise a part of the planned US$20bn investment to strengthen telecom infrastructure

through FDI. Amply indicating that this augurs well for the economy, the economists have linked a 1% growth in telecom penetration to a 3% rise in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Currently, in India airtime rates are among the lowest in the world. Leading telecom private players in the country such as Hutch, Airtel, Reliance, Escotel, Idea and the state-owned BSNL and MTNL are at a cutthroat competition to build their individual massive subscriber base. Over the last few years, call rates have dropped sharply due to escalating price war. This has also given a significant boost to the rural market. In the eastern part of the State of Uttar Pradesh, for example, while the first 100,000 connections took five years to reach, the same number was sold by Airtel in less than two months earlier in 2005.

According to V&D100 2005, the 10 th Indian Telecom Industry Report, released by a prominent Communications business magazine Voice & Data, private operators accounted for 43% of the total telecom services revenue in 2004-05 in the Indian telecom market.

Wireless Options Worldwide, various wireless technologies continue to evolve. However, the growth of wireless technology in India has been increasing consistently over the years. In fact, wireless technologies represent a rapidly emerging area of growth and

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importance for providing ubiquitous access. India is expected to see the growth of wireless data services through 2.5G technologies and the exploration of data applications over the next 2-3 years. A wide deployment of Bluetooth and Wireless LAN in the home and enterprise markets is to be witnessed in future. The growth of wireless data services, however, depends on the availability of more relevant content, which is still wanting. Besides, the fate of wireless technology also depends on the usefulness of content and applications, interoperable standards, and user acceptance.

According to Eric A. Brewer, some of the most promising wireless technologies for rural connectivity are: • CDMA450: CDMA is the technology developed by Qualcomm that is widely deployed as CDMA2000.

CDMA450 is a variation that runs at 450 MHz and is good solution for mixed data/voice service and also for large flat areas in which a single expensive

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tower could cover a large rural area.

WiFi: Though a low cost solution, the normal usage of WiFi (as defined by the 802.11 standards) provides short range connectivity intended for sharing and relatively poor support for voice connectivity. This is a good solution for hilly areas or places with line of sight among villages (to minimize tower costs).

WiMax standard (802.16): It has higher bandwidth and is very | July 2006

suitable for replacing fiber for wireless backbone networks. But there are some challenges, for example, the standards are still in flux, demonstration networks are still rare and WiMax equipment is expensive.

Future plans The future model of tele-info services has to be both futuristic and financially viable.

It must have the capabilities to meet the future needs of e-Commerce, tele-info services, social services such as e-Education, e-Health and delivery of public services including e-Governance. Broadband appears to be an appropriate platform for rollout of services and development of last

mile connectivity through wireless technologies appears to be most suited considering cost-effectiveness.

There is a need to finalise the legal, institutional and regulatory modalities of opening of broadband services in the rural areas quickly to leapfrog the broadband rollout. Dayanidhi Maran, while spelling out his vision for the next two years, indicated that the Internet connections are expected to increase to

18 million by 2007 from 5.45 million in December 2004. Broadband connections are targeted to be 9 million during this period. The GoI also recently announced a new broadband policy in keeping with increasing connectivity across the country. The policy aims to target 20 million broadband subscribers and 40 million Internet subscribers by the end of 2010.

The future for telecom industry in India, undoubtedly, holds promise. As we have seen, the industry as such is growing at an increasing pace. There is a tremendous potential for growth, as connectivity still remain beyond reach

particularly in the rural hinterland.

As the current scenario indicate, fixed-lines would be left far behind in the race being overtaken by wireless communica-tions on a massive scale. The Government of India’s decision to raise FDI is significantly aimed at giving the industry the much-needed boost. However, the growth of wireless technology sector would significantly depend on the availability and utility of the content, the issue of interoperability, and the user acceptance.

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Augmenting PURA initiative through cost-effective implementation Rakesh Radhakrishnan As part of the 2020 Vision and the Next Generation Communication and Information Technology Solutions emerging today to fulfill the IT and communications needs within the PURA initiative context in India, it is pertinent to explore different perspectives from which Architectural Integration and Functional Alignment can take place

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URA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) is a strategic initiative that has the potential to empower Rural India and can ensure that India, in its entirety, can participate in economic and social progress in the next 10 to 15 years. One key characteristic of PURA is the 30-60 km of ring road connecting a cluster of villages along with a link to a nearby city. For example, there are more than 100 villages near a place called Dhamal in Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, a town that is about 100 kms from Chennai. The proposed PURA initiative would essentially connect these villages around the town of Kancheepuram with a circular ring road (2 lanes in each direction) and would further connect to a link road (or a National Highway) that connects Dhamal to Chennai. The idea is 12

to connect all of rural India with 5000 such projects at a cost of INR500-1500mn (US$10.79-32.37mn) for each project.

Along the lines of providing the physical connectivity, there are also plans to provide network connectivity to this cluster of villages within a 30–60 km range.

All major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore etc. already have fiber networks. Therefore, the ideal cost effective implementation of small metro sized networks (50 to 80 km range) that would cover these cluster of villages wireless, would involve Next Generation Wireless Networking technologies (high throughput, high speed 40MBps and low cost) that also leverages existing Internet connecting wire-line implementations such as Cable and Fiber Optic networks.

WiMAX, an IEEE 802.16 standard, has the potential to augment the PURA initiative with ubiquitous coverage in all the 5000 cluster of villages essentially covering the entire nation. It can effectively cover 25,000,000 square kms, which far exceeds India’s total land area of 3,300,000 square kms. Even based on a conservative estimate of 1 implementation for every 5, nearby PURA cluster could potentially cover 5 million square kms, reducing the need to approximately 1000 such implementations instead of 5000.

In India, recently (early 2006) VSNL in conjunction with Aperto Networks has successfully deployed such wireless MAN in 65 cities, with plans to deploy in 200 additional cities by mid 2007.

It is pertinent to understand the pros www.egovonline.net |

and cons of WiMAX. These could change over time.

The positive aspects of WiMAX are the following: range of 5000 to 9000 square km would easily cover one or more cluster of villages of PURA; implementation process is cost effective; momentum towards WiMAX based 4G in neighbouring nations including Pakistan and Korea; usage of unlicensed spectrum (2.5 GHz and more); potential delivery of Voice, Video and Data over the same Access Network (negates the need for other last mile access networks); offers mobile access as well (laptops, mobile TV etc.); standards based (with embedded patented technologies from firms such as Nortel) and supported by Intel, Nortel, Alcatel etc.; can leverage Open Source software extensively to offer localised services; Technology is alignable with LAN (802.11) and WAN (802.20); good throughput and bandwidth; and, base stations can be Solar Powered (harnessing replenishable resources such as Solar and Air).

The negative aspects of WiMAX are as follows: still requires Network Access Points (NAP) to connect to the Internet (via Cable networks or Fiber Optic NAP in cities); terrain characteristics affect deployment designs and costs as well (hilly regions, dense forest areas etc.); WiMAX deployments are still in TRIAL phases in USA, UK and Korea; requires clients to be WiMAX enabled; and, may require upgrades to 802.20 in later phases.

A WiMAX tower station can connect directly to the Internet using a high bandwidth, wired connection (e.g., a T3 line). It can also connect to another WiMAX tower using a line-ofsight, microwave link. This connection to a second tower (often referred to as a backhaul), along with the ability of a single tower to cover up to 3000 square miles, is what allows WiMAX to provide coverage to remote rural areas.

In fact, WiMAX can actually provide two forms of wireless service. There is the non-line-of-sight, WiFi sort of service, where a small antenna on the computer connects to the tower. In this mode, WiMAX uses a lower frequency range — 2 GHz to 11 GHz (similar to WiFi). Lowerwavelength transmissions are not as easily disrupted by physical obstructions; they are better able to diffract, or bend, around obstacles. There is line-of-sight service, where a fixed dish antenna points straight at the WiMAX tower from a rooftop or pole. The line-of-sight connection is stronger and more stable, so it is able to send a lot of data with fewer errors.

Line-of-sight transmissions use higher

frequencies, with ranges reaching a possible 66 GHz. At higher frequencies, there is less interference and lots more bandwidth.

WiFi-style access would be limited to a 4- 6 mile radius (perhaps 25 square miles or 65 square km of coverage, which is similar in range to a cell-phone zone).

Through the stronger line-of-sight antennas, the WiMAX transmitting station would send data to WiMAXenabled computers or routers set up within the transmitter’s 30-mile radius (2800 square miles or 9300 square km of coverage). This is what allows WiMAX to achieve its maximum range.

The final step in the area network scale is the Global Area Network (GAN).

The proposal for GAN is IEEE 802.20. A true GAN would work a lot like today’s cell phone networks, with users able to travel across the country and still have access to the network the whole time. This network would have enough bandwidth to offer Internet access comparable to cable modem service, but it would be accessible to mobile, always-connected devices like laptops or next-generation cell phones.

Working of WiMAX In practical terms, WiMAX would operate similar to WiFi but at higher speeds, over greater distances and for a greater number of users. WiMAX could potentially erase the suburban and rural blackout areas that currently have no broadband Internet access because phone and cable companies have not yet run the necessary wires to those remote locations.

A WiMAX system consists of two parts — WiMAX tower and WiMAX receiver.

A single WiMAX tower can provide coverage to a very large area, as big as 3000 square miles (~8,000 square km). A WiMAX receiver and antenna could be a small box or PCMCIA card, or they could be built into a laptop the way WiFi access is today. | July 2006

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National WiMAX deployment The requirements for the deployment of a National WiMAX includes cooperation between IT, Telecom and Government organisations for multiple pilots — between 4 or 5 in potential locations in the North, South, West, East and Central India, closer to major cities. For example, one Pilot could involve IBM and Erricson, another with Sun Microsystems and Alcatel, and another with HP and Nortel etc., in conjunction with carriers in India such as Reliance, Bharti, VSNL, Tata etc.; Common Infrastructure SW Services (open source) per cluster of villages — customised with location specific information, entertainment, education, news etc. (based on requirements captured from local regions). For example, one region might have a heavy concentration of cotton production and clothing manufacturing, and their specific needs have to be met in terms of information services; tie-up and partnership with engineering and science schools in rural locations per cluster of villages, for facilities and volunteers (offering internship opportunities);

assessment of administrative staff requirements and cost of such human resources to augment network deployments per location, based on Pilots; assessment of the requirements of connectivity to India’s Internet backbone; vendor participation and funding for trials (in terms of network equipment, hardware and software tools) with assistance from the Indian Government and Educational institutions (approx. US$2.5mn for 5 trials); accurate estimates of costs of implementing and maintaining; and, defined set of implementable security functions.

High Level Conceptual Architecture India has a total of 3.3 million square kilometres of land area that requires network coverage. Roughly, 5000 square kilometres can be covered with one WiMAX deployment at rough cost of US$0.5mn. This would require about 750 to 1000 deployments (of WiMAX MAN’s) to cover all of India’s rural areas.

Therefore, a conservative estimate is US$500mn to cover all the 5000 PURA locations. Such implementation should take into account and leverage existing

High-level Architecture (deployment)

assessment of ongoing operations and maintenance costs based on the 5 Pilots (OA&M requirements documentation); assessment of hardware and software costs and requirements based on the 5 Pilots (web servers, application servers, security requirements, and more); assessment of networking requirements and costs between W-MAN and NAP’s located in cities (T1, T3, fiber link etc.); 14

infrastructure such as building (engineering colleges), existing cell towers, open-source software, student and volunteer workers, gifts and grants from Fortune 100 tech companies etc., and strive for reducing the overall cost of implementation and maintenance in order to offer free network access to the masses.

As part of the Pilot phase and feasibility analysis, a thorough analysis

of the demographics and distribution of villages around towns and cities needs to be captured and understood. The work being accomplished as part of the highway infrastructure and PURA ring roads can be reused as well. These characteristics (demographics, population distribution, village clusters, town and city locations etc.) along with terrain data, logistics for solar energy and the availability of the internet backbone will determine the exact number and locations of the WiMAX base station deployments around the nation. However majority of this deployment architecture can be determined based on what is being learnt from the 5 pilots.

A phased approach beyond the 5 pilots could potentially begin with increments of 25 to 100 deployments per quarter, completing the full rollout within a span of 10 to 16 quarters (2.5 to 4 years).

This initiative in conjunction with the PURA initiatives must be treated as a New Entrant ISP covering rural areas (non competitive due to its reach to remote areas where ISP’s do not exist) and offering connectivity for free – fixed and mobile. However as an ISP this venture could potentially generate revenue from Local Service Providers offering valued added applications including interactive games, video conferencing, VoIP telephony, instant messaging, streaming media etc., and to enterprises that offer there services to these remote locations.

Revenues that could potentially be used for operations, administration and maintenance costs, in the long run.

One key factor that needs to be noted is the fact that a WiMAX deployment only offers Access Networks across rural India.

However, there are basic services that would be required for such large-scale deployments as well as connectivity to service networks via a core network.

Such services include primarily AAA (authentication, authorization and auditing) services, OSS and Billing — if revenue generating services are offered such as content services, or if service and content providers are charged for the reach of their services. However, these services are to be augmented with localized services as well, based on local regional requirements in terms of information services, content etc. www.egovonline.net |

WiMAX offering fixed and mobile services

Based on this solution architecture, each deployment of a MAN (1000 such deployments can be replicas of the few that gets tested, first), would include Base Station, Service Network Gateway, Redundant AAA Servers (highly distributed identity systems), Redundant OSS/B Servers (Open Source Linux

has to offer (from online education to school going children to online Bachelors and Masters degrees); access to a participative Internet — sharing wedding albums to posting Blogs on subjects of interest; access to a collaborative Internet – sharing knowledge – virtual events etc.

For example, online tutoring over the

Given the background and objectives of PURA and the high level visionary leadership offered by India’s leaders such as President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Dr. PV Indiresan, the same spirit should be applied to this National Wireless Network — for the People (the rural population of India) and by the People (volunteers, organizations, NRI’s and government agencies) — to ensure India’s supremacy from all perspectives — social, economic and cultural by 2020 based), Basic Local Service Servers (web, news, application servers), switching gear for connectivity to main link to the backbone, and WiMAX enabled terminals to test.

Strategic Benefits The long term strategic benefits include direct employment generated by the 1000 plus deployments in terms of operations, administration and maintenance staff; direct employment generated by the 1000 plus deployments in terms of managing the links to local service providers (e.g., local tourism and availability of hotel rooms, availability of specialist doctors and treatment centres); access to all the information resources that the Internet | July 2006

Internet for a world of children needing affordable tutoring; promoting indigenous solutions to a global market.

For example, farmers can promote a specialised fruit juice (only available in India) that acts as a boost to the human immunity system (taps into the massive Ayurvedic product base in India); empowers local folks with local and global information; indirect employment generated via augmenting effects; industries in rural areas leveraging the MAN for disseminating sensory data (from sprinkler systems to electronic goods — all generate sensory data throughout the manufacturing and supply chain management processes); travel and tourism in rural areas

benefiting from high speed connectivity; transportation and logistics benefiting from high speed connectivity; increase in telecommuting due to reach of the access network; benefits for the old aged and handicapped in terms of services offered via the access network; communication possibilities during natural disasters; emergency communication possibilities in rural locations; live webcast of India’s major events (cultural and social) from and to rural locations; more effective participation of rural India with a global community for productive purposes; stimulates next generation network services and business models around these services (location based, presence based, identity enabled, etc.); and more.

Conclusion India has this opportunity to leapfrog other developed nations in terms of skipping major 2G, 3G and 3.5G deployments and laying the foundation for a 4G public network directly at a fraction of the cost when compared to traditional 3G networks. The specific technology offered by WiMAX (802.16 protocol) and OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multi-plexing) and its respective reach is well suited with the PURA concept.

Leveraging programs from leading vendors such as Intel, Nortel and many others, India can potentially trial multiple implementations of the WiMAX standards based on products recommended by the WiMAX Forum.

Also, given the background and objectives of PURA and the high level visionary leadership offered by India’s leaders such as President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Dr. PV Indiresan, the same spirit should be applied to this National Wireless Network — for the people (the rural population of India) and by the people (volunteers, organizations, NRI’s and government agencies) — to ensure India’s supremacy from all perspectivessocial, economic and cultural by 2020.

About the author Rakesh Radhakrishnan is Sr. IT Architect, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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Radio Technology

Aiding rural e-Governance initiatives efficiently Ananjan Datta

Wire-line technologies are not really feasible for a successful eGovernment strategy.

However, the use of radio technology is capable of solving many of the problems being currently faced by governments trying to provide rural connectivity 16

T

he World Bank defines ‘eGovernance’ as referring to “the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government”. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends such as better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions.

Traditionally, the interaction between a citizen or business and a government agency takes place in a government office. However, with emerging information and

communication technologies (ICTs) it has now become possible to locate service centres closer to the clients. Such centres may consist of an unattended kiosk in the government agency, a service kiosk located close to the client, or the use of a personal computer in the home or office.

Analogous to e-Commerce, which allows businesses to transact with each other more efficiently (B2B) and brings customers closer to businesses (B2C), e-Governance aims to make interaction between the government and citizens (G2C), government and business enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency relationships (G2G) more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.

e-Governance initiative requirements For any e-Governance initiative, there are some technical and commercial criteria that any solution must meet before it can be seriously considered. Some of the main www.egovonline.net |

criteria include throughput, scalability and adaptability, transaction latency, reach, price, broadband connection speed, and support for industry and international standards.

Throughput: How much data can the system transmit? An e-Governance initiative has to be self-sustaining in terms of generating revenues by piggybacking paid-services on the same network.

Hence, the bandwidth required will change depending on the services to be offered like VOIP, e-Biz and market/ weather reports etc.

Scalability and adaptability: It should be seen whether the bandwidth can be increased as and when required and the network can be extended easily.

The network bandwidth should be able to arbitrarily grow while offering increased performance levels that might be demanded in the future. The network should be able to expand to provide future connectivity to any device, at any time and at any location within the specified coverage area.

Transaction latency: The time taken in accomplishing a given task needs to be assessed. However, different applications tolerate different latencies.

Reach: The location where the service is to be provided needs to be identified. An e-Governance initiative will ideally reach every village. It therefore becomes important to ascertain that the technology used is capable of doing this.

Price: The cost needs to be determined. How much does it cost up front? What are the recurring and maintenance costs? These factors will determine the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the project.

Broadband connection speeds: The technology should be able to provide adequate bandwidth to support typical rural applications and services, such as Distance Education, Tele-medicine, Entertainment etc., concurrently and at a reasonable number of locations.

Support for industry and international standards: The technology should support industry and international standards to ensure lower costs and interoperability with different vendor equipment.

In a country like India, with limited resources, there are further dimensions | July 2006

that need to be considered while selecting a system – Ruggedness, and Reliability and durability. Regarding ruggedness, the operating temperature range of the equipment should be from -40ºC to +80ºC. The equipment should be about 95% humidity proof. For reliability and durability, the communications net-work should be recognised as a critical infrastructure and should not have a single point of failure. Fail-over and redundancy mechanisms should be embedded to ensure high levels of uptime.

Obstacles Some of the major issues facing any e-Governance initiative in India include infrastructural inadequacies, time frame required for installation, costs, and geography. Issues such as power supply, telecom connectivity and bandwidth come in the purview of infrastructural inadequacies.

In rural India, the availability or lack of electricity is well known. Despite best efforts, a number of villages still remain to be connected to the rest of India by telephone. Howsoever, when telecom connectivity is concerned, even if it is there the available bandwidth is not enough for Internet connectivity for e-Governance projects. The time required to set up leased line/cable networks is usually measured in months and years for far-flung areas in rural India. The use of traditional methods to provide connectivity – wires and cables on poles or underground – is expensive because of labour and material costs. Given the long distances and the difficult terrain that is often involved, Wire-line connectivity is impractical for all of India’s 638,365 villages.

Solution For a successful e-Governance strategy, Wire-line technologies are not really feasible. Rather, many of the problems facing governments trying to provide rural connectivity can be overcome by the use of radio technology. To confront Infrastructural inadequacies such as power supply, telecom connectivity and bandwidth appropriately, installation of radios is important. To suitably tackle power supply problem, radios that work on AC as well as DC power can be installed (Hence, there is a possibility of

using a solar panel for power supply).

Wireless radio links provide an easy way to provide telecom connectivity even when there are no phone lines. Radios (manufactured by MakSat as per its claim) can provide connectivity at broadband speeds over distances of up to 75 kilometres.

It is very easy and fast to set up Wireless links, sometimes in a matter of days as there are only installations at the two ends. Besides saving on labour and material costs, Radio links also save on recurring costs of leased lines as they work on the free ISM Band of 2.4 GHz. Using OFDM technology (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), there are Radio links that can work on NLOS (Near Line of Sight). OFDM uses a composite of narrow channel bands to enhance its performance in high frequency bands (such as 2.x/5.x GHz) in urban and rural applications where building-clutter and foliage can negatively impact the propagation of radio waves. Already, a point-to-point link installed has been working satisfactorily over a distance of 75 kilometres.

Radio communications systems can be rapidly deployed - sometimes in days and weeks rather than the months and years of wired systems. Radio is less sensitive to distance or terrain difficulties.

Radio can be cost effective, which is very important in a county like India where the cost per user/village has to be very less so as to provide the widest coverage possible. Radio is arguably a solution for the provision of service to the world’s telecommunications ‘have-nots’. All Wireline technologies like ADSL and Cable have drawbacks, while Satellite links are still prohibitively expensive compared to Radio Links.

Wireless Infrastructure requirement In case the system being installed is wireless, then there are some additional features which should be present. These include Wireless broadband connectivity, operation in multiple frequency bands, multiple device support, robust error correction, centralised management solution, quality of service, and security.

The kiosks should be able to easily connect wirelessly in select locations and outdoor areas in the identified Gram 17

A proposed e-Governance model

Panchayat/Village to various applications and services, at any time. The system should be able to operate in multiple frequency bands (licensed and license exempt, if required) and over a wide range of channel bandwidths. For both connectivity and application access and usage, the wireless network should be able to support desktops, laptops, PDAs and similar devices. Robust error correction would allow the system to be deployed in less than ideal radio conditions.

There should be a centralised management solution. The Service Provider should be able to control and manage the e-Governance centres established within a large area (may be a district) from a central location. Tools should therefore be available for efficient management of such infrastructure and to ensure that critical maintenance can be performed quickly with minimal disruption to the network community.

There should also be provision for remote upgradation of the software provided with the equipment.

There should be a focus on quality of service (QoS). The wireless network should support latency and packet losssensitive applications such as streaming media, and it should have the ability to dynamically allocate bandwidth based on priority. The bandwidth allocation should also be remotely managed. Regarding security, it is possible that several government services would be provided through the network wherein 18

confidential data would flow from the secured State Data Centre only to the authorised user. It is therefore necessary to have a robust but easy to use security solutions, transparent to the user wherever possible, woven throughout the wireless infrastructure to ensure confidentiality and integrity of all data passing over the entire network.

Case Study A few projects for various state governments have been undertaken by MakSat Technologies. One such project was undertaken for the state of Jharkhand. The state wanted to provide an interface for tourism information and for citizens to contact the various government departments through 15–20 kiosks spread across the selected cities.

The kiosks were to be connected with a server kept at a centralised location, from which all the applications would run. The project rollout was to be in a phased manner and take the less possible time. The bandwidth had to be enough for Multimedia applications and the system had to be scalable and expandable for future additions to the services and if more kiosks needed to be added. The equipment had to be rugged to sustain extremes of temperatures and humidity.

Accordingly, one Base Station with an omni antenna for the central location and the Slaves for the Kiosks, connected in a Hub and Spoke configuration, were provided. Since the costs were to be kept

as low as possible, Point to Multi-Point links between the central location and the kiosks were recommended instead of a Mesh network. The bandwidth provided is 2 Mbps, which can be increased in the future as and when required. The maximum distance of a Kiosk from the central location is about 20 kilometres. The equipment provided can sustain temperatures of 40°C to 80°C and can take humidity levels of up to 95%.

Another solution that can be provided to States for their e-Governance initiatives is a Mesh network, which can seamlessly cover the entire city.

The network is very robust and self-healing as there are multiple paths to each node. The network can be used to provide wireless Internet connectivity, which will make the project self-sustaining by generating revenues for the state.

e-Governance project for rural areas For rural areas, the solution consists of a Radio Hub every 30 kilometres or so. The Hub will be connected to the Government Offices and Procurement Centres by Point-to-Point radio links. The Radio Hub will further connect to local PoPs (Point of Presence), which will distribute the services to villages in a radius of 5 kilometres. Each village will have a kiosk run by local entrepreneurs, which will provide services.

Internet connectivity can be taken either at the State Administration offices or at sites near the Radio Hubs and distributed over the Wireless network. This project can be made self-sustaining by charging (or rather allowing the local entrepreneurs to charge) fees for the services. The project can be rolled-out in a matter of days for each such unit. This makes it a very costeffective solution for rural areas. Remote management and monitoring software allows the state to have a centralised control system.

About the author Ananjan Datta is Manager Business Development, MAKSAT Technologies, New Delhi

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