Ratnesh Mittal, Mumbai:

There are two Indias when it comes to broadband too! There is the metro and large city India where every home user has at least one reliable service provider -- Tata, Reliance, Airtel or BSNL/MTNL. There is also a Hathway and other cable operators but their quality of service is better left unsaid. I have used MTNL, Reliance and Hathway broadband consumer versions in Mumbai.

The other India is at the moment much less fortunate since private telcos are only now beginning to invest in making their network reach out to residential areas and be broadband enabled. BSNL has the reach but its broadband roll-out is far behind schedule.

Most homes in a place like Mumbai are not large enough to allow for a demarcated office space within the home, something that might be essential to bring in the discipline of working at home

Murali Mohan, MD, Astra Infonets, Hyderabad:

I have been using VSNL broad band from the past two years at home. The reliability of the connection was very poor and I have lodged at least 60-70 complaints in the past one year. It has been a real challenge to get a stable connection till now. On an average, it was available only for two days in a week. Whenever we log in during the peak hours, the speed comes down drastically reducing the direct working hours. With this sort of service and delivery, it might be a dream to make a home office in near future.

Rohit Mathur, Hyderabad:

Broadband has matured in a big way, at least in the metros. I have been using Airtel broadband for working from home for the past two years, and except for service outages (just two of 40 minutes every day till now), I have had no issues. The connection is reliable, always available even in case of a power outage and at the promised speed.

Atul Narania:

The broadband infrastructure offered by carriers in major cities provides reliable connectivity. The services on offer are far superior to the earlier dial-up regime. The challenge is availability of the service across all localities. I guess this would also get addressed in the coming days through wireless broadband technologies. This would promote working out of home and infrastructure would cease to be a limiting factor.

Jatinder Ahuja, Delhi:

Broadband in India, especially in metros, has come a long way but also still has a long way to go by way of speeds and customer care. I have Internet connections from Airtel and Hathway. Airtel shows about 95 per cent availability and Hathway about 85 per cent. Speeds are at about 70 per cent of the promised level. Biggest challenge with these operators is that once they have an outage, it takes long to repair and there are no satisfactory answers on the reason behind the fault and estimated time of repair.

Kalmesh Joshi, Bangalore:

I have been using Broadband at home for more than a year now. There has been no outage so far. The only issue that bothers me is too much spam and possibility of hackers stealing sensitive information. Home users cannot afford to have a full fledged security device. So, a security filter at the Internet service provider level would reduce this.

Mihir Singh:

Broadband availability and service delivery are India's two biggest challenges. Infrastructure availability may be not existing within the same city. Other biggest challenge is service delivery and support, as this is normally offered by a business franchisee who will not sign any service level agreement (SLA) or follow any specific guidelines. If we overcome these two factors, I strongly see India's Internet penetration growing and expanding very fast.

Rana Pratap Sircar:

In metros, the broadband connectivity is available and growing. However, the real issue is connectivity to new apartment complexes (in metros where trenching is no longer allowed) and that of VAS. The first one leads to connectivity owes (which is resolved to some extent through the combination of fixed Broadband Wireless and DSL). The second one is a major issue. India is still a Broadband Greenfield. So, we can expect this to remain as such for some time. How does it impact working from home -- VAS can really make home a very productive environment...lack of good VAS makes all the difference for those who avail Broadband services at home for working.

Mukul Agarwal, a BPO employee using the work at home model:

Dhwani Consulting, a BPO, isn't your standard registered BPO. They have a small but a premium operation working mostly in the non-English foreign languages sector. Their requirement was for only 40 agents geographically dispersed across India with connectivity from different ISPs. Primarily DSL from VSNL, Airtel and WAN Sify. All these agents work from their homes. The transactions were logged and recorded remotely (service hosted by our company), thus enabling audits and better performance. To top it all flexi time and home based.

As for the wireless delivery of bandwidth we are deploying metro wide wi-fi networks for triple play -- data, voice and video. Although mobility is a component to be added in at a later stage once we have reached a critical mass of subscriber base in a territory. For now, we are offering point-to-multipoint connectivity. Wireless to the subscriber premises and wireless in the customer premise too -- not only the last mile but also the intermediary mile too.

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