Should We Petition Bsnl/trai For Higher Speeds?

[Abhishek]

256k for unlimited was achieved by lots of sweat and hard work. The forum members got together and mounted an email campaign which forced the BSNL to introduce new plans. Now, the question arises whether should be petition again to TRAI to re introduce the definition of Broadband as 512k? There are couple of problems here:1) What do you need faster access for? The content service providers don't exist. You Tube/ Google Video has a neglible audience from India. 2)File sharing is "illegal". You wish to download songs? Your ISP would start monitoring the connection. 3)Video Conferencing? How many people do that? Does the usage base justify the expenses involved ?4)1 Mbps is availble from BSNL at a steep price of 3000 per month with a download limit. Technically speaking its available, but then, how many customers would opt for it? 5)Set up VPN: It's still "illegal" AFAIK as per BSNL. Hence, we need a clear direction as to why we need unlimited broadband at higher speeds. Once this is clear to us, we could start petitioning TRAI. Thats a later story. How many among you would like to work for better connectivity?

 

[Sushubh]

i pay 2100 for 512k Unlimited which gives me more like 300k.maybe trai needs to say. no 'UPTO' speed packages.

 

[LoneCrusader]

Broadband in India has always remained under scanner by leading IT magazines and many Expert Brainz. All we know for sure is that Broadband in India is not we can call " A True Broadband". It has always remained like a mixed breed of DialUp and True Broadband. The result is what we call a "time pass" service of broadband. The worst part is that the average Indian User is excepting it with open arms and is more than satisfied with what he is gettin. Now the part that sucks the most is that the Indian user is divided into two types of crowd. The first type being the "average user"...the one who loves nothin more than to have a cyber mail for himself and is quite excited by opening google.com. The second type being, what we know as an extreme user..a true weilder of intenet power and knows how to put chillies in ISP's ass. Now what does not work in the favour of the Indian extreme user is the fact that he belongs to the minority section. The average user does not give a crap...cause its gettin what it needs. The result is that the extreme user looses all leverage of demand and the ISPs...as always lazy and stubborn dismisses the minoity's demand. Personally i like to think that Airtel launched Unlimited Plans cause it wanted to capture the ailing Indian Broadband Market to make a quick buck.....cause lets face it....Airtel is all about making money...nothin else. Why the other ISPs were "forced" into launching the unlimited plans was the fact....that wherever Airtel was going the other service providers were facing connection losses. So BSNL took the first initative and introduced the competitive 900 Plan opposite 999 Airtel PLan.Then the others fell in respectively.Why do we need more speed?1) India needs a revolution. If India needs to become true IT superpower it has to break the speed damn it has built on its Gateways.2) Why are countries like Sweden and Korea providin high speed net? Whats so special there that is forbidden in India?3) File Downloading through channels like credit card fraud or hacking and cracking is illegal...yes. But the reason these Torrent Sies and P2P Softwares are in business still is because of the fact that "File Sharing" is supposed to be totally legal. A MILLION Gigs of data is transfered every day around the world. Nobody can brand it illegal.4) We re simply sick of being struck in frequent downtimes and crappy ISPs. Somebody is throttling, sombody is slowing speeds and someone has a crappy CC. We have just had it. Time to change.The list just can go on and on......

 

[Sushubh]

torrents are said to consume a majority of internet traffic nowadays. and if anyone says that a majority of traffic on the torrent networks is for legit stuff, i had like to kick his ass for being stupid. the question is, how do you justify the demand for high speed in india. just because other countries have it already does not mean we should have it too. my suggestion is... make decent broadband connectivity available throughout the nation first at cheap rates. and concentrate on quality of the service and the service provider. once that is done. move to the next step. if broadband was available at my place, i would not have to shift to gurgaon in the first place. if a 1meg connection is available at a place near my house and not at my place, it renders the thing useless for me.

 

[Abhishek]

Sushubh has rightly said about the higher speeds. Point is, that when I ask for higher speeds, for what do I need it for? An average dodo is a number in majority; most of them wouldn't even know what a frigging browser is. Content online is next to nil. For example, if Star Plus made it's Saas Bahu serials available online, it would make sense if they started making them availble as downloads for a fee. The demand would spike then. CNN-IBN has free video clips. Still, they don't have a flash based always on transmission online. The numbers don't justify the investments for the back end. This only leaves us people out who bitch on the forums. Affordable broadband? The prices have crashed to Rs 250 per month. How much affordable can it be? OK, no one mentions that you just use it for 400 MB limit and any more than that, BSNL would finger your happiness. Hence, that argument doesn't hold either. In my opinion, this is a long drawn affair. 1)Awareness via mass media. Internet presence is mandatory and present content creators and providers are hardnosed a**holes who are not betting their money on a virgin field. 2)Mass media again- higher speeds justify the e governance initiatives.3)Telemedicine (even though it's not a tried concept), video conferencing (good for upstarts) skype like VoIP (ok, well Vonage like) is another option. However, it would hurt the big players so it s a zero sum game. 4)File sharing has to come in mainstream. Till the time the dodos evolve (high hopes indeed), we wouldnt see. Gaming is one option, though in a nation of billion people and assuming 300 million young people (rough stats), serious gamers who play online, are roughly estimated to be around 50,000 to 1 lakh. Would they be pampered?One way out is a tiered service. Higher band of speeds when need arises (for example intensive gaming session for as long as you desire) and then you wouldn't really need blazing speeds to open up mail/ google. Similarly, file sharing et al can be moved to those times when the demand for the networks is less, say for example, during nights. This is an evolving idea, so do let me know.

 

[sudhamshu]

Sorry to be a little off topic. But I think it is an important point.The ISPs currently are interested only in getting more and more customers but are not doing any serious effort to keep the existing ones happy.First, let them get their act right in providing quality support. (I am rellay p!ssed off with TATA indicom service. The noobs don't have any clue how frustating it is for a user when he doesn't have connection for 2 weeks.) As it is already mentioned, average user is more than happy with whatever he is getting. Secondly, It should be made mandatory to credit the user for the downtime in service. That would help better than asking to increase the bandwidth limit.

 

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[Sushubh]

that's the whole point. speed is not the only problem right now...

 

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QUOTE(Invincib!e @ Jun 19 2006, 06:30 PM) [snapback]54179[/snapback]
Secondly, It should be made mandatory to credit the user for the downtime in service. That would help better than asking to increase the bandwidth limit.
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ooh, that would be tough ...but very welcome.

Trouble is, who to believe here ?

Is there an idiot-proof way to show that the ISP is at fault. typical example...no connection, isp replies reboot machine, do that, saem reply, isp says u got virus. So they promptly send someone over. IT works, he leaves, connection drops again...u see the joke here right.

IF you wanted to prove to a third party, the ISP is at fault, how does one do this. And can a non-tech savvy person manage it.

The only effective way to get better service anywhere has been more competition, if they know they stand to lose customers, they naturally take the extra step to provide the quality. This was mentioned in the TRAI paper, when competition is not there to the extent it is in westeren countries how do you ensure acceptable perfromance. You can't and thats the predicament we are in. Some players might take the extra step but that's more the exception than the rule.

 

[Abhishek]

One more problem. The uploads suck. With a cap of 64k uploads, it makes it useless for any application whatsoever. This is ONE factor which takes away the cheer for using 'broadband". By the way, what do the people use their connection for? Mainly surfing? Video Chat? And guys like us on file sharing? What is the idea behind Mbps speeds? What kind of content has taken off there? Is IPTV pervasive? Some of the questions that need to be answered here, imho. Till the time we can't define what we need and WHY we need, it would be difficult to plan a case for it.There is a valid case for 3rd party verification of the "connections". Check out any ISP and you'd know about their horrible link up. The exact details elude my memory, but it has something to do linking among the ISP's; the traffic within India is routed from Singapore! If this isn't stupidity, then what else is. But then, this is off topic and I am sure some one must have discussed about it elsewhere. BSNL fellas came scampering down to my home when my connection was down for whole 2 days. They too have this standard tripe about "viruses affecting windoz"! When confronted with Linux box, their grins changed to "horror" at the thought of checking the lines and the backend. More competition wouldn't be allowed for one simple reason. The big fish will eat the small one. ISP licence is available for Re 1. With plain vanilla dial up going out of flavour, the ISP's have to rely on BSNL/ VSNL/ Reliance backend. No prizes for guessing here about the scenario. Point again, here is...what do we do with the speeds?

 

[Sushubh]

Uploading speeds are fine on Airtel. Most ISPs around the world providing meg speeds do provide much slower upload speeds. A regular guy wont use uploading much considering it would be used only for sending mail attachments. but people running web/ftp servers from home and torrent do need good upload speeds. i need them for ftp management of my sites.Voice and Video Conferencing is of course a relevant point here.I don't think everyone in the west with meg speed connections are anyways using the available speeds unless they are power users.