20 million broadband subscribers

We are again in the season for setting targets. While the 250 million telecom subscribers by end-2007 now seems quite reachable, communications minister Dayanidhi Maran has come up with a new one. This time it is broadband: 9 million subscribers by the year-end and 20 million by 2010.
All that sounds nice. But it is far easier to achieve a mobile phone target than a broadband target. One, with about 25-30% illiteracy in India, it is easy to talk on a phone, but using a broadband connection is a totally different ball game. I for one am quite pessimistic on the 9 million target for this year itself. Something in the region of 6 million is achievable, but 9 million is stretching it a bit too far. But then if ministers do not set targets then what will industry do?
Ok, Maran says that based on technologies like WiMax coming in. But, it is still early days as far as WiMax is concerned. Will HSPA go way ahead by the time WiMax finally settles down? That's something that operators would love to know. Personally I believe that Indian mobile operators should simply junk 3G and go straight for HSPA. After all there are at least over a 100 HSPA networks globally now.