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Of wireless loops and telecommunication for India's masses By
Leon D'souza The year was 1876. America had turned 100. The Philadelphia Centennial was America's grand birthday bash. The Centennial Exposition boasted a variety of remarkable exhibits -- from the hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty to the Corliss steam engine. However, no one anticipated the most extraordinary of them all. It was exhibited by a 29-year-old teacher and still wet-behind-the-ears inventor from Boston. Called the "harmonic telegraph," this gadget would forever revolutionize the way the world communicates. The inventive schoolteacher was none other than Alexander Graham Bell, and the "harmonic telegraph" is what we know today as the telephone. More than a century later, telephony is powering a revolution in the developed world. It has undergone a transformation from a novelty for the few to a ubiquitous and essential element of commerce and society here in America. Most of us cannot imagine life without the familiar ring of a telephone. Utahans are perhaps more dependent on telephones than others are. Tuesday's disruption of phone services made headlines in The Utah Statesman. According to the Federal Communications Commission, Utah has the highest telephone penetration rate in the country -- an astounding 98 percent. Telecommunication provides immediate linkage between people, but only for those who have access to this technology. For us in wired Utah, it is perhaps hard to imagine that 70 percent of the world's population has never used a telephone, and for 98 percent, the Internet is a distant dream. In my home country, India, a nation of more than 1 billion people, there are just 25 million telephone lines and about 1 million Internet connections to go around. Making a call from home is a luxury rural India cannot afford. This is because building conventional communications infrastructure costs around $1,000 per home. To break even, telecom operators would have to charge an amount beyond the reach of most would-be customers. Enter Digital Cordless Telecommunication, or corDECT, a new wireless telecommunications technology that could change all that. Developed jointly by the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, Midas Communication Technologies, Madras, and the U.S. semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices Inc., the new system is cheap and easy to install. For the unversed, here's what sets corDECT apart. Telephone exchanges have traditionally relied on what is called a "wired local loop" to connect them with their subscribers. These connections have typically used pairs of copper cables. But laying out wired local loops has been an expensive, time-consuming process requiring extensive planning and involving intensive labor costs. According to a projection by the International Telecommunications Union, developing countries alone will need 35-million pair kilometers of copper cable by the turn of the century just to maintain existing waiting lists. The increasing costs of conventional infrastructure, and the operational problems associated with wired lines, are among other factors fueling the move toward wireless local loops. The new corDECT system is built around a micro cellular architecture. That is, the area to be served is divided into many tiny cells. The cell radius differs on the basis of subscriber density. Wireless base stations replace expensive cabling, significantly reducing installation costs. Each base station serves about 30 to 100 subscribers in a neighborhood. A subscriber's home is equipped with an answering-machine-sized box with ports for a telephone and a computer. The system allows both devices to share bandwidth. So if a call comes in while a user is surfing the Web, the Internet connection speed simply slows. The equipment costs about $200 per home. The low price tag has prompted widespread interest in corDECT. The technology has been implemented in 11 countries, including Madagascar, Fiji, Kenya, Brazil, and India. Harvard University's Center for International Development, together with the MIT Media Lab's Digital Nations consortium, chose corDECT for its Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) project to connect around 1000 villages in southeastern India. The technology's scalability, affordability and effectiveness could open new doors for more than 95 percent of India's inhabitants. For a country teetering on the brink of a digital abyss, corDECT offers a new ray of hope. On The Web: Unleashing Telecom and Internet in India http://www.tenet.res.in/Papers/unleash.html Communications Revolution Set To Transform 1000 Tamil Villages |
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