RAD Modems Enable Affordable Browsing in Indian Internet Cafés

DishnetDSL is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) with a social conscience. Its mission: to bring education to the public by transcending geographic, language and economic barriers. This is in keeping with the fundamental business philosophy of the Sterling Group, DishnetDSL’s umbrella company. This philosophy, according to Sterling Group founder Shri. C. Sivasankaran, is “to discover the unfulfilled but vital needs of the society and to turn them into viable business opportunities. The goal of the Sterling Group is consumerism of advanced technologies for the benefit of many, and to create a future model for businesses committed to community welfare.”

With its slogan, “The World for Every Indian,” DishnetDSL is committed to contributing to the development of India by empowering the nation with education through low cost Internet access to the entire Indian population. RAD Data Communications and its Indian distributor, MRO-TEK, have helped realize this goal in the numerous Internet cafés opened by DishnetDSL in many Indian cities. Low cost browsing is available to patrons of the cafés through computers sitting on a LAN. RAD’s HTU-E1 unit with built-in Ethernet bridge connects directly to the LAN and provides a 2 Mbps HDSL connection to a local switch.

Traffic from all Internet cafés is then shunted over fiber to a 34 Mbps concentrator at the DishnetDSL point-of-presence (POP). From there, FCD-E1 access units convert E1 signals to Ethernet and pass the traffic to email or Web servers or to the Internet.

“We aim to capture significant market share by maintaining a strong focus on cutting-edge technologies with products such as RAD’s HTU-E1 and FCD-E1 for Ethernet connectivity,” says S. Sridhar, General Manager of Technology at DishnetDSL. “Using the Ethernet port of HTU and FCD units has made this project very cost-effective, and the network was up and running in a very short time.”