News: 'India poised for bandwidth boom'

(PTI 23/02/2007) Chennai - The Centre's decision to allow upto 74 percent foreign direct investment in telecommunications has given the world an opening to contribute and participate in India's growing economy as the country is poised for a bandwidth boom, President A P J Abdul Kalam said on Friday.

Inaugurating the ‘International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication and Network’ at MIT in Chennai, Kalam said the country had achieved the distinction of becoming a fast growing broadband market in 2006. “Many experts believe India is ready to become the most bandwidth- competitive country in the world,” he said.

“Bandwidth price is continuously falling down and the trend is that it could drop significantly in the near future. The growth of the mobile phone market has been phenomenal. Mobile phones in India are increasing at the rate of six million phones per month," he said.

"Increased use of radio frequencies because of ever increasing number of mobile phones and expansion of mobile communication networks have brought in new problems and concerns," he noted.

"In recent times, the overwhelming increase in the number of mobile phones and number of service providers competing with each have created such a situation that we see cellphone towers everywhere," he said

However, he warned that these "towers are radiating high power radio waves, continuously exposing children, senior citizens and people needing healthcare to harmful electromagnetic radiations."

Communication systems had to share electromagnetic spectrum with other users like walkie talkies, terrestrial TV, FM stations, radars and microwave ovens, Kalam said.