This refers to Shyam Ponnapa’s ‘Managing spectrum’ (November 5). The question is: Why do we need 3G? Why don’t we focus on the landline business alone for broadband access? Or better still, why not have community Wi-Fi?
The arguments against these are many. Community Wi-Fi is deemed to be a security risk but one can always look at countries like Singapore — it has implemented this on a large scale all across the country. Moreover, the mobile phones required to access the 3G invariably have Wi-Fi access.
We have enough bandwidth in the country but as anyone would testify, we have problems in implementing the ‘last mile access’. Having a contentious set of issues like the one of 3G is not going to solve the persistent problem of ‘last mile access’ because no one is interested in sinking money for a long term.
In any case, 3G would most likely be used for carrying more voice traffic.
Abhishek Puri, New Delhi
