(C) Copyright 1995 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@dxm.org)
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April 10th, 1995: DLF Qutab Enclave, spread over nearly 3,000 acres and Asia's largest private sector township, wants to build infrastructure for cable TV, video conferencing, e-mail, home shopping/banking, security, the works.
Developed by DLF Universal Ltd, a large real estate Company, the township is located on Delhi's southern border and is one of the posh places to buy a house these days. About 50% of the land area has been built over so far, and although most plots are sold at present about 1,500 households have moved in. The population is expected to grow to about 40,000 families over the next 5 to 10 years.
DLF is build all the support infrastructure for the residential and commercial areas. As a private township, they don't have to bother much about government rules concerning mixing cable and telephony, which is what they want to do. They don't lack resources, but want to ensure that what they wire in right now will be made the most of. They recently invited bids from companies interested in designing, supplying or operating the whole or part of the network. While they would be delighted if a company adopts the township, full of information-hungry yuppies with computers, as an experiment, they are quite willing to simply pay for it all.
Do spread the word, and if anyone is interested (for more info to write a story, or to wire DLF) they can get in touch with me.