Currently, there are about nine million broadband subscribers in the country which is seen to be significantly under-penetrated, says the paper on 'Dawn of the Digital Decade'.

Releasing its findings, Assocham Convergence Committee Chairman C S Rao points out that this under-penetration is mainly due to factors like insufficient wire line infrastructure, fragmented local cable operators network, lack of a broadband policy to regulate pricing of rental and usage rates and delays in awarding spectrum to wireless broadband deployments.

The paper, however, says the recent broadband wireless auctions, in which operators were allocated spectrum for wireless broadband deployments, came as a much-needed respite for future of broadband adoption in the country.

It is expected that total broadband subscribers will reach about 275 million in the next five years. This is due to the fact that submarine cable capacity would grow substantially and supply of capacity will shoot up as adoption of BWA would become more popular.

Leveraging on broadband technologies, the paper says excessively high charges, fragmented cable operators and low data ARPU (average revenue per user) have made operators realise that wireless is the most effective way to provide affordable broadband to masses in country.

With around 43 per cent of internet subscribers still using dial-up connections at the end of 2009, there is potential to migrate existing subscribers to high-speed services.

The paper says that the enterprise mobility market is expected to reach Rs 1,386.23 crores by FY14, and 3G is expected to play a significant role in this high growth.

Presently, the enterprise mobile data market consists of telecom service provider revenues generated via value added services, data cards and GPRS.

These three segments comprise about 17.1 per cent of the total enterprise mobile voice and data market.

With increasing number of enterprises providing reimbursements for mobile data usage to the employees, and with the proliferation of 3G networks; the enterprise mobile data services are likely to grow in popularity and usage, it says.