Of the current players, Sprint RPG, Global Telesystems , Satyam Infoway , Datapro, Dishnet and Wipro-BT looks like being the players to watch out for. It is a natural foray for them into the value added services segment. Since data and the Internet business will be minuscule compared to the voice business, the telcos are not expected to give a lot of focus to this part of the business. Cable operators are in an interesting situation. Recent months have seen a lot of talk about PCs and computers merging, with WebTVs already taking up the ground.
Cable operators are the best off in terms of the bandwidth going into people s homes.
But their equipment's will be needed to be upgraded to support two-way communications. Again, it will be an incremental service for cable operators to offer. The cable market is not yet well organised in India, so it will be some time before they begin to offer Internet access. They have information useful for their target audience. But they are more likely to host their information on the web servers than get into the business themselves.