An excellent article on the status of broadband in India in The Hindu Business Line argues that private broadband players face, and will continue to face, problems because state operators BSNL and MTNL aren’t willing to share their last mile networks.

That leaves the private guys two options: invest huge amounts of money to build their own last mile networks, like Bharti Airtel is doing, or cut a deal with the Mom & Pop local cable operators to provide last mile connectivity. Private operators providing broadband over coax, like Sify and Hathway, have been able to build their broadband customer base faster tapping the local cablewallahs, as they focus on Internet Protocol and because they are not telecom operators whose primary business is voice. But this model may not be sustainable.

We in Delhi had a pretty bad experience with Sify—likely showing the downside of partnering up with the local cable guy–and we weren’t alone. We got a Sify connection because Bharti’s operator-built network hadn’t reached us yet, proving the point that tapping cable operators may speed rollout. But for the nine months that we were Sify customers, our daily morning routine included (usually me) calling up ‘Sify Suresh’ (as he was listed in our mobile phone’ address book) at 9:00 am to tell him that the Internet was down again.

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Indian operators are aiming to roll out 3G even before earlier generation services like GPRS take off. The country’s telecom regulator is already beavering away on issues like the price of 3G licenses, the allocation of spectrum and how much companies can charge for value-added services, and now it has allowed Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., Bharti Airtel and Hutchison Essar Ltd. to use 3G spectrum to test equipment in anticipation of a launch later this year, says Reuters .

Optimists say India can leapfrog slower-bandwidth tech with a speedy launch of 3G. But there are some questions whether India is really jumping ahead of the curve or blindly following in the footsteps of operators in more developed markets—where 3G’s fancy gizmos proved hard to sell to consumers. We know, high-end data and video downloads and Bollywood movies on your mobile, yada, yada, yada. But here’s a frank assessment: “3G as a revenue booster [in India] is far-fetched at this time,” Shubham Majumder of Macquarie Research told GigaOM.

On the upside, freeing up the 3G band may alleviate a spectrum shortage that makes a mobile call in a place like Bangalore a crapshoot on a good day—plagued by dropped calls and that infuriating “network busy” signal. But don’t get too excited yet. “A sudden, massive overnight migration to 3G may be unrealistic to expect,” Tonse Telecom’s Sridhar Pai told GigaOM. “It will also come with a fee, and some won’t adopt it immediately. In the intermediate time, it may make things worse.”

Sunil “Sunny” Gavaskar is a living legend, someone whose preeminence is equal to the likes of Reggie Jackson amongst those who play with flat bat. The man who set many records on the cricket oval, has become a well read columnist, as precise with his pen as he was with his square cut. He has recently turned his attention to podcasting, and has found that while it is easy to speak, it is hard to speak concisely.

Sunny started podcasting at Yahoo! India and in his usual articulate and engaging way he talked about the experience, at Blogcamp. (His podcasts are here.) Even though he is successful television commentator, often doing live broadcasts, he articulated the challenges of podcasting.

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Our India correspondent is in Chennai, India covering the first Blogcamp, India’s largest unconference of bloggers. She will be filing occasional updates and indepth reports on the event – Om

Chennai, India: Atul Chitnis credits blogging for spurring Domino’s to open a branch near his house in Bangalore. He said his posts about Domino’s not delivering to his neighborhood, a fact commented upon and picked up other Bangalore bloggers, inspired the pizza chain to actually mail him and ask him where he lives. “A branch is soon opening up, well, not next to my house as I would like it to, but close enough for them to deliver.” Neha Viswanathan’s spleen on some of local ICICI Bank’s policies caused the hapless bank to write to her offering to help, she said.

Blogcamp, India’s largest unconference of bloggers—yes, almost 200 people from around India showed up –kicked off with such anecdotes this morning in south Chennai at Tidel Park. According to Blogstreet India, there are some India-based 4,500 blogs in India, with Chennai having the maximum of 368 blogs which tracks some 4,500 India-based blogs, says the country boasts around 80,000 active blogs in total, with Chennai having the maximum of 368 blogs. The stated purpose of Blogcamp is to provide a forum where bloggers “can share their stories and be inspired by innovative and successful blogging experiences.” There was a lot of such sharing on Day One but one got a sense that there was a lot of preaching to the converted.

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After the dot-com bust and IT slowdown nearly crushed the startup he co-founded, entrepreneur Alok Mittal realized India’s business environment had a major shortcoming. There was no money for early stage companies. He survived–selling the startup he co-founded, jobsahead.com, to Monster.com for $9 million in 2004—but his five-year roller coaster ride gave him another idea.

With even venture capitalists looking to invest as much as $1 million-$3 million, Indian entrepreneurs badly needed angel investors willing to commit smaller amounts in, and more importantly, provide guidance to, very early stage, pre-revenue companies.

To shore up the gap, together with Saurabh Srivastava and some other people, Mittal informally started Band of Angels, India, modeled on Band of Angels and Angel Capital Association, to provide not just money but also high-quality mentoring to budding entrepreneurs. The group that formally launched this April has 30 investors from a variety of industries and has made three investments.

The only one Mittal will name is Knowcross which makes software for the hospitality industry. The others, he says, are a technology retail chain and a heritage restaurant property that plans to scale up to a chain of high-end restaurants.

GigaOM recently chatted with Alok Mittal, who is also executive director at venture firm Canaan Partners’ India office, about the kinds of companies and the sectors Band of Angels is looking to invest in. Here are some excerpts of that conversation.

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A 256 kbps broadband connection can cost upto $40 a month. There are only 1.7 million broadband users, and yet most Indian telecom operators are dreaming about an IPTV future. Talk about Unreality TV!
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There is a lot of talk about India’s growing dominance in the Indian media these days. The Financial Express says India is, “taking over the world wide web in a big way (and) outpacing the world.”

The recent surge in the growth of Internet connections might back that claim. New numbers from technology research firm comScore Networks that suggest India has 18.02 million Internet users over the age of 15. This makes India the ninth biggest country (up from the tenth in March) in terms of the total online population over the age of 15. India’s Internet users increased 7.8 percent since March and this is higher than the world online population growth of 2.7 per cent for the same period.

Another outfit, the Internet and Mobile Association (IAMAI) of India, is even bolder. They say the country has as many as 38.5 million users over the age of 12. “Our figure does include cyber cafes (in addition to homes and offices),” Subho Ray, president of IAMAI told GigaOM.

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