The success of India?s telecom revolution is restricted to mobile voice with very little to showcase in fixed line and internet access, or high ? speed broadband. For a country that is the global IT or the world?s back office, its own internet penetration remains one of the lowest in the world. Even though internet users may be multiple times higher, actual broadband penetration will not exceed 18.1 million at the beginning of the next decade. In contrast, mobile telephony will add as many as 350 million subscribers during this five ? year period to end at roughly 615 million by mid 2012. These forecasts fall short of the government?s conservative target of 20 million high ? speed internet subscribers by 2010 end. Even with a 300% growth rate over the next five years, the sector will fall short of the 50 million mark by 2012.?

The internet broadband penetration is on the down side, mainly because of the policy failures including inadequacy of fixed line infrastructure, a barely profitable ISP(Internet service provider) business and low domestic PC penetration. Weak broadband penetration could severely slow down over all telecom growth, crippling India?s ISP?s in the process. It will also hurt ambitious government programmes, such as e-governance, e-commerce, telemedicine and e-education all of which are dependent of high-speed broad-band internet access. This gloomy environment has prompted telecom regulator Trai to recommend internet telephony for ISPs as it believes this has the potential of becoming the killer application that will kickstart growth. However, the uncertainty of DOT accepting Trail recommendations or succumbing to the interests of existing mobile operators to slap an additional entry fee for ISP?s is a shadow over he sector. I now conclude this article by stating that Telecom revolution has been confined to mobiles with not much to boast in Net, broadband.