Net race : Gujarat outpaces Cyberabad

Asian Age, Delhi( 24-4-200)

Infotech capitals of the country face stiff competition. Gujarat has overtaken other infotech savvy states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as the most preferred internet destination for internet service providers, according to an internet survey.

The survey by Indian Market Research Bureau said "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 net penetration level has emerged as the least popular destination for internet business among the eight metros in the country. Mumbai with 34 ISPs 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 or 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 providing service in one or more of top eight metros, the survey based on the feedback from 138 ISPs across the country noted.

Scanning the customer focus of ISPs is said that 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 the ISPs targeting the home segment, the survey pointed out that small office home office is way down the priority list of the players who prefer to operate in the business segment.

The IMRB survey further said about 17 per cent of the 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 would continue to focus on business and not the home segment, it said "even currently only a few large players are in the home segment and these are players with a strong brand pull", Nearly 28 per cent of ISPs would focus on the cable operator market in near future as against 20 per cent at present. The study further said the 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 and application service providers 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 would offer web designing as a value added service against 63 ISPs now, the survey said adding as many as 56 ISPs would soon enter the VPN segment and 43 the ASP market. On the access mechanism, it said although most of the ISPs are currently providing access through dial up, leased line and ISDN mechanisms, in near future cable and wireless would develop as popular access mechanisms.