Gujarat most preferred by ISPs

Business Standard, Delhi (24-4-00)

Contrary to popular belief, Gujarat has overtaken other infotech savvy states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as the most preferred Internet destination for Internet service providers (ISPs) in the country, according to an Internet survey.

The survey by Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) says "Gujarat on the whole has about 40 ISPs, which is the highest for any state. This is surprising as Gujarat is not known to be an infotech savvy area."

While Calcutta with about 13 ISPs and low Internet penetration level has emerged as the least popular destination for Internet business among the top eight metros in the country, Mumbai with 34 Internet service providers has been identified as one of the hotbeds for Internet operations followed by Bangalore with 29 ISPs.

Delhi and Ahmedabad come next with both housing as many as 28 ISPs, respectively. Hyderabad alias "Cyberabad" is a poor fifth among the big eight metro's with 25 ISPs.

On the whole, penetration of Internet is substantially higher in the metro cities and most ISPs intend providing service in one or more of top eight metro's, the survey based on the feedback from 138 ISPs across the country noted.

Scanning the customer focus of ISPs it says most players are providing services to the business segment and 72 per cent of ISPs are focusing on small and medium enterprise segment and 62 per cent on the corporate segment.

With only 67 per cent of ISPs targeting the home segment, the survey points out that small office home office (SOHO) is way down the priority list of the players who prefer to operate in the business segment.

The Indian Market Research Bureau Internet survey further says about 17 per cent of ISPs are providing services to other smaller ISPs and 45 per cent are catering to the cybercafe market.

Predicting that in the coming years the ISPs will continue to focus on business and not the home segment, it says: "Even currently only a few large players are in the home segment and these are players with a strong brand pull". According to the survey, 28 per cent of Internet Service Providers will focus on the cable operator market in the near future against 20 per cent at present.

The study further says ISPs in the country are now graduating to value added and dedicated services beyond vanilla Internet access. While the main value added services being provided currently are web hosting, designing and web co-location other services like virtual private networks (VPNs) and application service providers (ASP) would be the key services provided by players in near future. The study further points out that about 68 A, B and C category ISPs are currently offering web hosting services and the figure is expected to increase to 112 by early 2001. Over the next few months about 97 ISPs will offer web designing as a value added service against 63 ISPs now, the survey says, adding as many as 56 ISPs will soon enter the VPN segment and 43 the ASP market.