Ramp Up or Lose Out

So finally, we have a figure to it. That a poor telecom infrastructure, with
special regard to international bandwidth, is a cause of concern is never a
chosen subject for debate. But a recent CII report points out that India stands
to lose $21 billion worth of investments in the ITeS/BPO sector to competing
Asian countries, on account of poor connectivity and bandwidth availability
issues.

The state of India’s telecom infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired.
Downtime in telecom networks ranges from 3% to a whopping 15%, against a global
benchmark of 0.1%. Downtime on even international circuits is an unacceptable 2%
against a global standard of less than 0.3%.

Lack of adequate infrastructure is a major threat to the realization of
Indian’s IT vision for 2008, the report says. Availability of affordable and
reliable long-distance bandwidth is a critical factor in success of ITeS/BPO
services, as unique nature of the work requires immediate connectivity and high
levels of redundancies, in everything from power to connectivity and at times
even locations.

An official in telecom industry confided that there have been many instances
where large corporates in the West have ruled out against outsourcing work to
India only because of lack of faith in the country’s international
connectivity. He pointed out that India had only linear international
connectivity, whereas other ITeS destinations including Malaysia and Philippines
had a ring-topology based international connectivity, thus offering absolute
redundancy.

On stake is an opportunity too big to loose. The global ITeS/BPO market is
currently estimated at $10 billion, and McKinsey says it may grow to $140
billion by 2008. And as $21 billion amounts to a whopping 15% of the global
market, we can wait to see if India could rise to the occasion and grab all that
is coming its way.

Rishi Seth in New Delhi