Reliance to offer broadband via CDMA, CorDECT: Reliance Infocom (as well as Tata Indicom) has chosen Qualcomm’s CDMA 2000 1x, which is capable of providing data speeds of close to 144 kbps for urban areas (the slower corDECT from IIT Madras will power rural deployments as it costs less to deploy - even corDECT can do 35/70kbps).

This will be worth watching, because dialup available to Indian consumers today typically maxes out at 33kbps on a good day, and `broadband’, while theoretically easy to get in metros, is hobbled for individual subscribers because of pathetic service or nonsensical 300M/month bandwidth-caps. A dial-up line that can do an effective 64k will be manna from heaven for Indian consumers.

The problem until now, of course, was that India was at a distinct disadvantage in terms of international — and even domestic — bandwidth available to it. The domestic bandwidth scene is now looking good, and international bandwidth, while far away from the 100Gbps talked about here, has come a long way from 350Mbps in 2000 to something like 3Gbps in Sep 2002 (over an estimated capacity of 900G - go figure)

All this means that the Indian home user has finally a fighting chance at broadband. At reasonable (by Indian standards) prices. And that is something to cheer about.