Corny though it may be, I found the title of this story (“Broadband now a power point presentation”) in the Times of India to be very perceptive. Because that’s pretty much what broadband in India has remained - some numbers on a slide. Projections have been made for 20 million subs by 2010, definitions have been conveniently tweaked to show that we’re still on track…and yet not much that has happened on the ground…even the base price for the auction of WiMax spectrum is rather prohibitive.

The “official” figures from the TRAI for broadband subscribers are as follows:

Just 20,000 broadband subscribers were added in October. And now, after a gap of over a year, we’re talking again about broadband over power lines (never mind issues related to interference)...I guess some day there’ll be talk about broadband via the water tap, but that’s what it will be—talk.