Come 2010 and we are still stuck at "256 Kbps" for broadband!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Prakash2004]

mtnl offers upto 4 mbps
airtel 16 mbps
tata 4 mbps
and reliance netconnect 3.1 mpbs
why do you say stuck with 256 kbps it's just a guideline/minimum speed but higher speed plans are aloso available
i know 50 mbps and 100 mbps speeds are years away.
you won't have to wait for 5 years for unlimited 2 mbps@1000 for 5 years. i expect it to happen by year end and there might be 8,10,12 mbps plans at cheaper rate as vodafone and airtel among others will be able to provide 3g internet @7.2mbps

The problem is no one knows when we would get 3G, till then we are stuck with these broadband plans.

btw tata indicom do provide 100Mbps plan.

 

[techtata]

Hi,

The difinition of broadband given by the govt of India needs to be changed to make it 2 mbps rather than 256 kbps. We are horribly lagging behind other countries in broadband penetration.

Infrastructure is not a big hurdle for broadband roll out in India as often said. Wireless broadband will do a great job and so will CDMA based internet such as Reliance Netconnect, Tata Photon etc. The monthly price of rupees 500-1000 for an unlimited 2-10 mbps speed is a good deal. But it should be strictly unlimited with no fair usage policy.

In the US there an ISP called Verizon which has many plans of different speeds such as 1 mbps, 3 mbps, 7 mbps, 15 mbps, 25 mbps and 50 mbps. These prices per month are as follows.

1 mbps - $34.99 (Rs. 1609 @ 46 rupees per dollar)
3 mbps - $44.99 (Rs. 2069 @ 46 rupees per dollar)
7.1 mbps - $54.99 (Rs. 2529 @ 46 rupees per dollar)
15 mbps - $54.99 (Rs. 2529 @ 46 rupees per dollar)
25 mbps - $69.99 (Rs. 3219 @ 46 rupees per dollar)
50 mbps - $144.99 (Rs. 6669 @ 46 rupees per dollar)

Here are the prices of 1, 3 and 7 mbps plans

Verizon | High Speed Internet: Plans


Here are the prices of 15, 25 and 50 mbps plans

Verizon | FiOS Internet: Plans


The US has not yet got broadband in the entire country. As I read somewhere most rural America still struggles with 1 or 2 mbps speed broadband type, but still better than India.

It has been argued that the USA has many rural areas where the revenue to be made by laying down fibre has not proven alluring to providers. However, US broadband providers often charge above the global average for their services and in some cases, more than those in many developed nations.

Obama Administration pledged its support for universal broadband, passing an economic stimulus package that will provide grants totalling USD 7.2 billion for the construction of national broadband infrastructure....

The USA broadband market comprises three main groups. They are cable companies, telecommunications operators and alternative competing carriers. Alternative carriers offer services over copper, fixed wireless, optical fibre, satellite and power-line, while cable modem technology unsurprisingly dominates in the USA......

The cable industry has invested more than USD 100 billion over the last decade in making broadband available to 95 per cent of all US households. During 2008, the US cable companies collectively retained their lead in terms of broadband market share...
.

Here is the link to this article

USA Broadband Overview | Broadband Country Overview | Point Topic

Here is an announcement by the US Federal Communication Commission to to connect 100 million U.S. households to 100 megabits-per-second broadband service by 2020.

US Announces 100Mbps National Broadband Plan For 2020 | eWEEK Europe UK

 

[techtata]

Australia is even worse. A friend of mine living in Perth has a speed of 512 kbps only. Although more speed is available but this is a reality to deal with.
It has proved difficult to bring fast internet to all Australians because of the large clusters of population in coastal areas contrasting with small, far-flung rural communities across a vast land.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Australia to get faster broadband

 

[techtata]

Broadband costs across UK and USA

Internet Availability In India: Broadband costs across UK USA

 

[techtata]

Here is the cost of broadband in Australia as provided by an ISP called BigPond, the biggest downunder.

Cable Broadband - Plans and Offers - Telstra BigPond

Speeds up to 30Mbps are available in selected areas of Melbourne and Sydney.........

BigPond Broadband Cable is not available in all areas. Actual customer speeds vary due to factors such as your actual location, your plan, internet traffic, your equipment/software and the way data is transmitted.

 

[mastersquall]

i remember when i was in UK at relative house he had downloaded a movie in just 5min . I was like WTF 5min but was busy playing game on ps3 didn't asked him the total speed of internet .

 

[TheSilentShadow]

Australia is even worse. A friend of mine living in Perth has a speed of 512 kbps only. Although more speed is available but this is a reality to deal with.


BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Australia to get faster broadband

Australia is quite large, so the cost of laying cable there is why broadband is so expensive. Sweden, Korea and Japan are smaller in comparison so that may be a factor in why they get such cheap internet.

With regards to India we do have plans upto 16mbps but it would seem that most of them have data caps or find loopholes like Fair Usage Policies to avoid giving truly unlimited service.

 

[mgcarley]

I can't believe I'm going to go over all of this again, but all of you are wrong. It's not the size of the country. Inside India there is plenty of unused fiber laying around. It's the cost of International Bandwidth - and more than that, the cost of peering that make it expensive, and the fragmented last-mile that make it bad quality.Both Japan to USA and UK to USA has many many many cables with many many terabits of capacity with some 30-odd providers competing for business, so wholesale prices of about US$10k per 10Gbit/s per month. You can't even get 155mbit/s at that price in India.Secondly, India has comparatively few data centers compared to the USA or UK or Germany or the Netherlands or France, and even most of those that are any good are expensive, and thus no mirrors of any kind.As someone from the region - I.E. Me - might know, Australia and NZ (which is even worse, FWIW, with only a single cable to Australia and a single cable to the USA) are both in the middle of nowhere.Australia has about the same number of cables between it and the USA as India (5). The thing is distance. Most submarine cable providers charge per kilometer, which is why a submarine cable between Singapore and Mumbai is cheaper than Mumbai to Marseilles. Same cable, same speed, different length = different price.THEN there is NIXI, which costs more per GB than any of my International bandwidth connections. No other peering facility in the world charges per GB. If they get rid of these charges, we could bring broadband prices down even further and increase speeds.I have written about all of these things countless times - if anyone needs further explanations, I'll be happy to provide them.

 

[Sushubh]

do you have access to the wiki? you can write generic responses there and link to there or you can do some critical articles that i can publish on techwhack from an entrepreneur looking to make it big in india but facing hassles from various sources? tw is not techcrunch. these articles would definitely help me.

 

[mgcarley]

do you have access to the wiki? you can write generic responses there and link to there

or you can do some critical articles that i can publish on techwhack from an entrepreneur looking to make it big in india but facing hassles from various sources?



tw is not techcrunch. these articles would definitely help me.

I just agreed to an email interview today from a bloke on Twitter... so why not? I could do that.