2009 and we are still stuck on 256kbps for broadband

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Why would someone want to increase the speed on unlimited connections? After all, there's nothing in it for the ISPs because people pay a fixed rate on those plans.I'm also on an unlimited connection and I would love for speeds to be increased. I think 1K for a 1 Mbps connection is reasonable, no?
 
U can't support these telecom companies they are getting more fruit from our money but sharing a very small part with us i.e customers....!!! so Pls. don ever support them...!!!
 
Why would someone want to increase the speed on unlimited connections? After all, there's nothing in it for the ISPs because people pay a fixed rate on those plans.

To expand the market perhaps by 10 or 20 times. I think the potential for broadband is huge: 50 million households and soon 100 million households. However you need plans which the average person can use. Which means unlimited: do away with the hassle of NUL, download limits, time limits etc. The speed needs to be 512 UL for the basic plan a speed at which video downloads are comfortable. And the price needs to be 500 p.m which is the kind of money which middle-class households are used to playing for cable. 500 for 512 is perfectly feasible but whether the ISP's will go there is another issue. It will probably require a push from the government as well as action on the 3G front.

I must say I am getting pretty pessimistic. We reached the 256 UL for 1000 landmark in 2005 and that was a pretty big deal back then. But we are pretty much stuck with prices dropping by a shade to 800 for some ISP's. Some ISP's like Tata Indicom don't even have a plan below 1000 p.m. Their cheapest UL plan is 384UL for about 1500 p/m which is ridiculous. I sometimes wonder if we will ever get even 512UL for under a 1000.

Anyway there is no question that the farce that is Indian broadband will cost the economy in the long run. Broadband may sound like an elitist product but it is critical to building a high-tech economy. It is the basis for other products and services like video-conferencing and video downloads. It allows for innovative work practices like tele-commuting which could reduce the traffic burden in our cities. And I wouldn't be surprised if our software companies start losing business to China and other countries because of our ridiculous broadband costs.
 
Don't compare the CHina with India with internet ....... this makes me laugh ...... every which go out of China are scanned ........ where every thing is free in India

That is a lie. I suggest you go and read the TRAI license agreement. As I understand the document, all ISPs are REQUIRED BY LAW to pay for a 10sqm A/C room, equipment and salaries for some government officials to watch for monitor all network activity. Plenty of things are blocked in India, believe me.

I'm building an ISP and I don't want any government officials snooping on my network... unfortunately, if I want a license to operate, I don't have a choice. Hell, I can't even own 100% of my own company (as I'm not a citizen). Because I think most officials and cops (anywhere in the world) are f**ktards, best I can do is make it as inconvenient as possible.

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I'm also on an unlimited connection and I would love for speeds to be increased. I think 1K for a 1 Mbps connection is reasonable, no?

I sometimes wonder if we will ever get even 512UL for under a 1000.

I am working on it for Mumbai, though the service is not released yet.

Our minimum plan is 1Mbps down/256kbps up, our top plan will be on-par with J-COM (Japan) at 160Mbps, and there are several tiers in between.

So far I've got the 1Mbps plan coming in at about Rs 1,300. Our contention ratio at that price is still well below TRAI regulations), so I am looking for ways to reduce my costs without reducing quality, technical support (I HATE the quality of tech-support in India), and while still keeping the company profitable.

We want to offer unlimited data, but there are three factors coming in to play with regards to the pricing:

1. The cost of a 155Mbps connection between Mumbai and Singapore comes in at about USD400k/year (which comes out at about 16.5 lakh rupees/month) - this connection can handle theoretically 48.5 terabytes of information in each direction per month (though we plan to purchase 2.5Gbps of bandwidth to start with).

2. Cost of peering to other ISPs in India is only 6 lakh rupees/year, however, there is a cost of Rs50 per gigabyte that is transferred.

3. I have to give 8% of my revenue to the TRAI.

As such, I'm looking at the option of allowing free local bandwidth, but a limit on international bandwidth, say, 10GB of international traffic per megabit with additional data plans able to be purchased (1Mbps plan comes with 10GB transfer, 100Mbps plan comes with 1000GB transfer).

This means that 2 users, anywhere on my network, can share at maximum speed (which for most users is probably 100Mbps), and it won't count toward their usage, however if they download a movie from someone in Sweden, this will count.

To give you an example of what I mean: if one guy is in Worli with a 2Mbps connection, and another is in Juhu with an 8Mbps connection, and they want to share a file, it will actually be transferred at 100Mbps (without the need for DC++ etc), and without any interaction from the user.

This also means that, for those using bittorrent, its likely that only the first 2-3 people will be downloading the data over the international link - subsequent users would be downloading from users with my ISP, and therefore not contributing to their overall data usage.

I figure this should reduce stress on the international link, and allow us to offer better plans than Reliance, Tata etc, and maintain a high quality of service.

I would like to hear what all have to say about my plans - please do PM me with questions, queries and any other feedback, otherwise check my profile for my other contact info.
 
@ mgcarley I like the part relating to peering within India @ 100mbps
If I'm not wrong I think you're coming with somewhat the same concept as whats going on in Romania
Internet in Romania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
speeds are usually divided in three categories: \"LAN\", \"Metropolitan\" and \"International\" with Metropolitan meaning a limited number of networks with which the micro-ISP has a peering agreement and sometimes the cable internet providers. Generally, for such broadband connections, speeds are 100 Mbit/s locally, 1-50 Mbit/s metro and 256-2048 kbit/s International.
 
@ mgcarley I like the part relating to peering within India @ 100mbps
If I'm not wrong I think you're coming with somewhat the same concept as whats going on in Romania
Internet in Romania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, a little bit like that. I was in Romania in January '08, and for a country that feels like you're stepping back in time by 40 years after entering from Hungary, I was able to sit in a mall in Cluj Napoca for several hours catching up on a few days email using the mall-wide wifi service, and was pleasantly surprised by the internet service there.

At the end of the day, our offerings are modeled similarly to what most ISPs in Europe have, meaning that we will likely offer some kind of telephony service (including free calls to landlines in many countries) as well as digital TV, mobile (data only) and city-wide wifi (unfortunately, per government regulations, I can theoretically offer this to account holders only).

In particular, I used to enjoy the services of Elisa, Sonera and Welho (Finland), Free and Neuf (France).

what is your company going to be called?

That is still being decided. We want a fairly short word that means "speed" in any language, but at the moment we're concentrating on the nuts-and-bolts. Suggestions are welcome.

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500 for 512 is perfectly feasible but whether the ISP's will go there is another issue. It will probably require a push from the government as well as action on the 3G front.

Sadly, this is not entirely true. There is this little organization called NIXI which makes it somewhat difficult because of their insane pricing - Rs 50 per gigabyte. And because NIXI is more-or-less a consortium consisting of the usual suspects (Reliance, Tata etc), the pricing is thrust upon all ISPs regardless.

And it's not like we have a choice - It's either peer with them, or have your traffic go out of India (usually to Singapore) and back - and the government doesn't like that idea for "security reasons".

My contact at NIXI tells me that the prices are coming down "soon" - but when and by how much they have not mentioned.

Additionally, unfortunately 3G is not a panacea. 3G requires more towers, which means more rooftop-space leases - and they still need to be connected by fibre. Even then, AFAIK, MTNL et al is still only offering standard speeds of 384k - the same speed as DoCoMo launched while I lived in Japan in 2001 (and, incidentally, Yahoo BB Japan came out with 8Mbps service that same year!)

Even though Reliance and Tata (in particular) 3G services are promising 3.1Mbps, from what I understand, no-one is getting anywhere near those speeds.
 
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