Finland makes broadband internet a legal right!

[mgcarley]

thanks @mgcarley - lot of useful information...

---------- Post added at 05:51 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 AM ----------



Not sure if you've answered these question already... so what according to you is the issue then. Why are isp's restricting speeds - My understanding all along was probably to make more money !

I can't say for sure why ISPs are restricting speeds. I can understand why they restrict speeds on unlimited plans, but not on data plans.

lol

he types alot.

Mostly to you. Mostly because you misread, misinterpret or argue that 1+1=3 even when I have factually proven it to not be.

as more speeds require more last mile cabling which means more money and biggest of all is the restriction to pu those cabling

No, sorry, but that is absolutely not the case. Most existing ADSL users I've seen should be able to receive 8+ Mbit/s. Most Cable ISPs should be able to deliver 30+ Mbit/s using existing cabling and with minimal equipment upgrades.

But. At these speeds, you'd not get unlimited plans.

and also the risk that if they provide higher speeds,then users might use more bandwidth

like on 1mbps you can download maximum of 342.5gbs per month

if they give 10mbps,people might download over 1tbs which normally doesn't happen but the risk is still there and an ISP can't afford that much bandwidth at a low cost.so they are taking it up slowly

This would apply to unlimited plans only, and you would expect to see FUPs from most ISPs. For data plans, there's no reason to restrict speeds.

I don't forsee it being a problem for us because our numbers suggest that for the price we shouldn't have many - if any - users exceeding the download amounts which would cause us concern.

well government of india doesn't

I'd be happy to lease out our fiber to any ISP who wants to pay for it - for the right price.

so people pay for that 1mbps besides taxes????

Of course they do. Do you think that just because electricity is also a legal right that they don't pay for it? Or water? Or food? How could you possibly assume otherwise?

Internet is provided by COMPANIES not the government. It would be different if the law said "legal right to FREE 1Mbit/s broadband", like Finns have the legal right to FREE education and FREE healthcare etc.

and i read somewhere that only 4000 homes are left to be connected.i could have misread it though

Probably from me you read that.

i was not just talking about your company but the entire indian broadband so you saying you company is not in the business of providing lower than 2mbps speed does not come here

You specifically said "I would not buy from your company if it only provided 256kbit/s on a 1mbit/s plan".

also yeas all users on torrents is an unlikely scenario but even a small portion of indian population downloading will make it very costly

Cost is relative. If that many people are downloading, then surely the revenue is allowing us to purchase sufficient bandwidth or indeed, as Bharti, Reliance and Tata do, own or part-own an international cable.

it will be alot more when a Billion people jump on the broadband ship or even 200-300million

By which time we'd be making damn sure that there is sufficient capacity to India to handle 200-300 million broadband users. But that is unfortunately a long way off.

yeah but thats what we are talking about that because if the cost it will be hard to supply to a billion people

If 1 Billion people want broadband, someone will find the money to build more cables. They typically earn back the amount they spent + interest in about 3 years: with a lifespan of 20-25 years, cables have a long time of being profitable for whomever built them.

yeah that why indian broadband can't have it as there must be done alot more work on policies first then broadband implementation

If we waited for policies to be written, you'd still have 256k as a maximum speed.

i don't know of these STUDENT housing,can you tell me about them?

i would like to shift there

Depends on your discipline and what degree you want to do. You'd need to be accepted in to a Finnish university first - housing is the least of your worries. You might not end up in Helsinki, rather in Oulu or something which are dealt with by different housing authorities. PM me with more details so that I can try to recommend where to start.

but will india be able to pay for it?

No... because consumers never get 1:1 contention ever ever ever - the economics simply would not work even in a super-cheap Broadband country like Finland. All I was saying is that sufficient capacity is there.

so i don't think ISP's SWEDEN have 1mbps bandwidth for 1mbps they sell but that not what i am talking about

i am talking about the following costs

Exactly. Even though ISPs have way less bandwidth per customer than they provision in various parts of the world, that doesn't stop you getting close to the advertised speeds most of the time, even though you're only paying Rs1500 a month or whatever.

It all comes down to metrics.

but they provide close to that speed

Debatable. In NZ, I was just talking on Friday with a senior manager at Telstra Wholesale who says that they only have to provision 32kbit/s CSR (constant stream rate) per user at the exchange level.

But that doesn't seem to stop me getting 12-13 Mbit/s to servers in other cities and ping times of 74ms from here to Auckland (stock-standard ADSL2+, about 150km), and 10Mbit/s in 130ms from here to Sydney (closer to 2000km).

and even if you were to have 1mbps bandwidth for each 50 people then you would only have 20million mbps for a billion people

it sounds very low if even 200m people went onto the net at the same time as they wouldn't get the promised speeds like we get today in india and you would have to have more bandwidth

But contention ratios of 1:30-50 are common and work perfectly well even in Europe, and it only matters if all 200m of those people go online to leech. But most users do not do that, and to put it simply, the metrics are in our favour to a certain extent.

When the time comes in India that we have to deal with 200m users leeching Hi-Def movies at Broadband speeds, I very much anticipate that we would have magnitudes more capacity available to use - both domestic and international.

At the moment, 2-3 million won't come close to saturating what's available, and as a single company, that would be a nice figure to achieve by 2020.

oh,you were talking about Finnish students,i thought indian students,that why i was suprised...........lol

You really need to read my posts more carefully.

and in india it isn't done.

it is done in my building but not the the caompany's wires to my building except HAthway,fivenet,nivyah,tata,airtel,mtnl which have been used by me and my building people..........hehe

So maybe we need to just make sure our network is open to all, install wires to all apartments in every building we connect and when we lease out the fiber to other ISPs they pay us the connection charge, while we absorb it. It would stop the necessity of having like 7 different cables in to each building (though I suspect in your case even with all those ISPs, it's 1 cablewala + MTNL and maybe Airtel).

they must be like RICH people,who don't care much about money it as they have it already

Pretty much.

 

[Raditz]

It will take us alot of time to come at the stage of development in Europe/ the developed world. We need to address more important social issues before any such step is taken.

 

[mgcarley]

It will take us alot of time to come at the stage of development in Europe/ the developed world. We need to address more important social issues before any such step is taken.

Not necessarily. While I sort-of agree about the social issues, with the way things are at the moment, there is no way in hell the government will be able to support a system such as that which is available in Finland (quality food and water and free healthcare and education - including university - for all) - the main things stopping anything happening in India is that compared to a race like the Finns, Indians are a lot more... greedy or even self-centered. Especially in the government, and I speak from first hand experience with both governments.

At least with the power and knowledge that a decent broadband infrastructure (and suitable pricing) could potentially bring, we could harness a lot more of the Indian labour market and/or India's entrepreneurial spirit, and we could do it more effectively, thereby boosting the economy, thereby allowing the government to support the aforementioned solutions.

In theory, anyway.

 

[blr_p]

Not only is this extremely old news, but as I was a Finnish taxpayer for 3 years, I can assure you, if you had a government like the Finnish one, the black market would disappear, money laundering would disappear, beggars and poverty would largely disappear
Agreed beggars & poverty would dissapear because they'd get subsidised housing etc. but i'm curious as to how black market & money laundering would dissapear. For that to be the case you'd have to elliminate greed and nobody anywhere has managed to do that. There's kickbacks everywhere.

I'm sure you meant to say greatly reduced and that's a direct function of transparency, the scandies + Finland usually top the charts when it comes to this.

... and you'd pay about 60% of your income to tax
Isn't that for the highest bracket tho ? of which maybe only the top 20% or fewer qualify ?

Currently the highest income tax rate in India is 30%, it used to be 40% ten yrs back with forms designed to give the payer a migraine. You'd need a professional just to fill them out. Small wonder that tax evasion was rampant and IT revenue was much less. Which lead to the belief that surely the govt is very corrupt as they never seem to have enough money to do anything at all

AFAIK IT has never been more than 40% in India, but then we also do not have a direct welfare state like abroad, but there are recurring levies or cess that get paid for most utiltites & fuel so i figure there's a hidden 5% extra.

I can't say for sure why ISPs are restricting speeds. I can understand why they restrict speeds on unlimited plans, but not on data plans.
Would it put downward pressure on the more lucrative plans they offer to corporates ?

I'm not sure what % corps make of the pie for an ISP but my guess is ISP's would prefer to deal with corps acounts more than personal accounts. Fewer overheads and larger income per customer. They cannot grow the amount of corp accounts at the rate of personal accounts. It does feel like price fixing to a certain extent of which the only cure is increased comeptition as opposed to regulation.

 

[mgcarley]

Agreed beggars & poverty would dissapear because they'd get subsidised housing etc. but i'm curious as to how black market & money laundering would dissapear. For that to be the case you'd have to elliminate greed and nobody anywhere has managed to do that. There's kickbacks everywhere.

I'm sure you meant to say greatly reduced and that's a direct function of transparency, the scandies + Finland usually top the charts when it comes to this.


It's pretty much non-existent in Finland... even I was questioned about it once because I got a bank account before I got a residence permit and they wanted to know who was sending me money. Finnish police don't really have much to do, IMHO

Isn't that for the highest bracket tho ? of which maybe only the top 20% or fewer qualify ?

Currently the highest income tax rate in India is 30%, it used to be 40% ten yrs back with forms designed to give the payer a migraine. You'd need a professional just to fill them out. Small wonder that tax evasion was rampant and IT revenue was much less. Which lead to the belief that surely the govt is very corrupt as they never seem to have enough money to do anything at all

AFAIK IT has never been more than 40% in India, but then we also do not have a direct welfare state like abroad, but there are recurring levies or cess that get paid for most utiltites & fuel so i figure there's a hidden 5% extra.


Yes, for overall taxation on the individual, 60% is on the high side - workers earning under something like 9,000 euros a year are taxed at 0%, but that's a fairly limited number (usually students and part-time workers) - a kindergarten teacher will earn between 15 and 20,000 euros a year straight out of university. Though with rents regularly exceeding 700-800 euros a month, a good 50% of their income goes to accommodation anyway.

However, many people in Finland are entrepreneurs/self employed - there are over 2 million active companies in Finland, all paying 26% corporate tax, so considering most of them are one-man-bands, many individuals end up paying quite high taxes due to the corporate taxes (though oddly, when I moved to Finland, my income went up & my tax liabilities went down... NZ taxes are quite horrendous considering the lack of free university education and whatnot). The average rate of income tax in Finland is 21.5%... BUT... this doesn't count the social security contributions and other deductions such as municipal taxes or church taxes (which you can opt out of but are paid by default) which make up the rest of the percentage. VAT is 22%, but food and transport are at lesser rates of 8% and 17%.

How all this relates to Finnish Broadband? Firstly, Finland does NOT have any government owned telecom companies. Secondly, most of the network providers have open networks and work with each other to ease the individual burdens. Thirdly, Finland is in a somewhat unique position that, when Telecommunications was just emerging in the first half of last century, Russia ruled Finland. And Russia liked to close down telecoms. So at some points, there were as many as 800 separate operators in this tiny little country. Because of that, they have always worked together, because if they didn't, nothing would have worked at all. You might not be able to call your neighbour because his phone might be with a different operator or an operator which had just been squashed.

India's situation now isn't too different. Many operators (not a bad thing in a country of 1 billion+ people), but the unfortunate thing is that none of them work together. MTNL would never give us rights to their last-mile copper for example, so we'd have to build our own or try using Tata's. Airtel had fiber running within meters of my apartment yet I couldn't get an Airtel line - probably not even a leased line. Cablewalas fight amongst themselves. Some are reasonable, many are not - they seem more interested in a quick buck than long term benefits and screw the actual ISPs to the wall with demands for high percentages. And unfortunately its these network operators which many ISPs rely on to deliver service.

But I understand the problems too. It's entirely possible that some of the operators and/or ISPs can't bill their customers properly, and some customers manage to get away with a few more GBs than they should. If they don't pay their bill for the 256k access which might cause a loss of a few GB, but imagine the same person having access to 4, 8, 24mbit/s and causing a loss of over 100GB? We've all read about these kinds of things - it might be difficult to absorb, all things considered, especially if it happens frequently. I understand (for example) Airtel's Fair Usage Policies if the reasons for having them are indeed valid, however I don't really agree with the limits in place considering the wholesale price as compared to what they are charging, and I agree even less with the way these plans are advertised.

Would it put downward pressure on the more lucrative plans they offer to corporates ?

I'm not sure what % corps make of the pie for an ISP but my guess is ISP's would prefer to deal with corps acounts more than personal accounts. Fewer overheads and larger income per customer. They cannot grow the amount of corp accounts at the rate of personal accounts. It does feel like price fixing to a certain extent of which the only cure is increased comeptition as opposed to regulation.

Corporate plans/leased lines do make up huge chunks of overall revenue, yes, but the speeds are not that much greater. What corporates pay for, however, is not so much speed, as reliability. But even Finnish consumer internet is reliable as reliable can be. The only time I experienced an outage was when something exploded near my house, taking out pretty much all cables in the sewers under that part under that particular section of the road. Even then, it was only out for a matter of hours.

If we are successful in removing the reliability issue (excepting issues we can not control, such as undersea cable breaks), then we might have no reason to charge significantly more for a business plan as compared to a consumer plan. I can't figure out why leased lines are so expensive. Yes, I have been told that it's because of the SLA, but a 1000% or more increase in price seems difficult to justify to me. Are they hiring someone to continuously monitor my particular line? Not likely.

However, what I'm talking about is the removal of speed caps from data plans. Setting aside the reliability, why do ISPs restrict a line to 2mbit/s when its capable of 6, 8, 10 or more, especially when the download limit is 5, 10 or even 20gb in a month? It would work out better for both consumers and the overall network congestion, of that I am sure.

Now, I might disagree a little bit with the competition thing (weird, eh?), and disagree that less regulation is needed.

What I mean is, there is plenty of retail competition (between ISPs, at least... cablewalas usually ensure that they are exclusive, so that could be a problem), but overall probably not much more is needed there. What *is* needed is some wholesale competition. We've all seen what has happened to SAT3/SAFE pricing since SEACOM arrived in Africa (despite SEACOM's numerous issues).

But even that is not the issue in India. What *is* the issue is that there are 9 cables, 3 operators. If a fourth operator were able to land a cable or take part in an existing one, and they offered access at lower margins (it *must* be possible to do because we've been offered bandwidth on the same cables at different prices AND we've been offered significant discounts merely for taking a 5-year contract instead of a 1-year contract), then ISPs would have a place where they can get bandwidth for much lower prices and so hopefully buy more.

The TRAIs current price ceiling on wholesale pricing is now too high - I think it's still set at 2 crores per STM-1 but I've never been offered a price even close to that high - however I was enquiring in 2009 whereas that price came in to effect in 2006. If it was reduced to a ceiling of 50-70 lakhs per STM-1 (this would break the Rs10/GB barrier), then we might start seeing a few price changes on the retail side too because then even I/Hayai couldn't bitch and moan that the price per GB makes unlimited plans uneconomical. I think these things need to be reviewed and enforced yearly, and the government needs to tell VSNL/Tata, Reliance and Airtel that if they don't like it, they can **** off

Perhaps they could/should also take a look at the last mile situation and see about cleaning it up too. Make it easier for us to lay cables and/or ensure that cablewalas don't destroy our stuff. Or encourage the building of an open network - I could get behind that. Ahh what the hell... ours will be open. Any ISP who wants to lease our fiber can do so at equal cost.

And while they're at it, NIXI's tariffs - domestic bandwidth should be ludicrously cheap! In NZ, Hayai is paying the equivalent of about 15 paise per GB for peering bandwidth - this is the way it's supposed to be (but we pay much more for international though, so it sorta works itself out).

---------- Post added at 03:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:03 AM ----------

Oops. Didn't mean to write that much.

 

[brickhouse]

Mostly to you. Mostly because you misread, misinterpret or argue that 1+1=3 even when I have factually proven it to not be.

i don't argue but discuss like you do.but you take it as other is attacking you

No, sorry, but that is absolutely not the case. Most existing ADSL users I've seen should be able to receive 8+ Mbit/s. Most Cable ISPs should be able to deliver 30+ Mbit/s using existing cabling and with minimal equipment upgrades.

no the cabling isn't that much and even if it is there one company doesn't use it with others

But. At these speeds, you'd not get unlimited plans.

unlimited plans were what we were talking about,if it was limited then the lines will be free after the usage of limit

This would apply to unlimited plans only, and you would expect to see FUPs from most ISPs. For data plans, there's no reason to restrict speeds.

again we are talking about the unlimited plans,FUPs come or not isn't the isuue.pure unlimited plans possiblity is what we are discussing

I don't forsee it being a problem for us because our numbers suggest that for the price we shouldn't have many - if any - users exceeding the download amounts which would cause us concern.

the users may not use the big numbers but atleast the cabling needs to be done appropriately.you can't just provide internet through one adsl connection to a building.you will have to put fiber optics to provide members of that building 100mbps per month.

I'd be happy to lease out our fiber to any ISP who wants to pay for it - for the right price.

wat would be the price,would the other company like to use it or pay the amoung for it?????????????????????????

many questions arise

Of course they do. Do you think that just because electricity is also a legal right that they don't pay for it? Or water? Or food? How could you possibly assume otherwise?

Internet is provided by COMPANIES not the government. It would be different if the law said "legal right to FREE 1Mbit/s broadband", like Finns have the legal right to FREE education and FREE healthcare etc.

yes but the legal right has very minimal cost.not the monthly premiums

Probably from me you read that.

??????????????????????

You specifically said "I would not buy from your company if it only provided 256kbit/s on a 1mbit/s plan".

by "your company" i meant anybody's company who provides shit speeds

Cost is relative. If that many people are downloading, then surely the revenue is allowing us to purchase sufficient bandwidth or indeed, as Bharti, Reliance and Tata do, own or part-own an international cable.

yes but even they can't provide unlimited net at high speeds because there is a risk that if people download more if they give them high speeds then they will be doomed but at the same time pay less

By which time we'd be making damn sure that there is sufficient capacity to India to handle 200-300 million broadband users. But that is unfortunately a long way off.

well you were talking about providing all homes high speeds now so i just made the point

and without the high penetrations will current cost go down,no they won't,only slowly slowly

If 1 Billion people want broadband, someone will find the money to build more cables. They typically earn back the amount they spent + interest in about 3 years: with a lifespan of 20-25 years, cables have a long time of being profitable for whomever built them.

but you were talking about now and now you are talking that when a billion people want it then cables will be done.you are debating your own points

and providing to a billion people isn't the topic of discussion but providing them high speeds unlimited at low cost is which is not possible for a long time which i have already mentioned before

If we waited for policies to be written, you'd still have 256k as a maximum speed.

well companies provide higher speeds but 256kbps broadband policy still effects companies decision as if for example 1mbps was the policy then we would have even higher speeds

No... because consumers never get 1:1 contention ever ever ever - the economics simply would not work even in a super-cheap Broadband country like Finland. All I was saying is that sufficient capacity is there.

yes they don't pay for it but even if over the subsciptions time they download for example 200gbs per person at 1mbps rs.1000 plans then even with the high contention ratio the company would be at loss.its just a situation,now don't go proving me that normally nobody downloads that much as i know it.but with the ultra cheap plans wanted in india,it can be hard to make money

Exactly. Even though ISPs have way less bandwidth per customer than they provision in various parts of the world, that doesn't stop you getting close to the advertised speeds most of the time, even though you're only paying Rs1500 a month or whatever.

It all comes down to metrics.

they get to speeds but will they make money as i don't think with rs.1500 indian broadband will go far,the price will come down.now with that low price that suits india,will ISP's make money?

But contention ratios of 1:30-50 are common and work perfectly well even in Europe, and it only matters if all 200m of those people go online to leech. But most users do not do that, and to put it simply, the metrics are in our favour to a certain extent.

yes on high speeds 1:30-50 contention ratio is there but still they pay much.now in india people don't pay that much,look at the telecom industry

When the time comes in India that we have to deal with 200m users leeching Hi-Def movies at Broadband speeds, I very much anticipate that we would have magnitudes more capacity available to use - both domestic and international.

yes but the tarriffs will also be super low

and again we were talking about the possibility now that you mentioned and i disagreed on

At the moment, 2-3 million won't come close to saturating what's available, and as a single company, that would be a nice figure to achieve by 2020.

agree they won't as tarrifs are still high and many people don't even use or understand the net

You really need to read my posts more carefully.

no i don't.you mentioned the one thing way up in the post and then mention at the end of the post that its in Finland

So maybe we need to just make sure our network is open to all, install wires to all apartments in every building we connect and when we lease out the fiber to other ISPs they pay us the connection charge, while we absorb it. It would stop the necessity of having like 7 different cables in to each building (though I suspect in your case even with all those ISPs, it's 1 cablewala + MTNL and maybe Airtel).

nah in my building there is a single phone dsl wire which all airtel,reliance,tata,mtnl can connect to.they only need to connect at the bottom and then they can provide dsl services.one is cablewala and nothing else.

 

[mgcarley]

i don't argue but discuss like you do.but you take it as other is attacking you

If you say so - my main issue with your posts if I'm honest is that often things are taken out of context and I constantly have to correct you

no the cabling isn't that much and even if it is there one company doesn't use it with others

I'm not sure if this even makes sense... are you agreeing with or disagreeing with what I said?

unlimited plans were what we were talking about,if it was limited then the lines will be free after the usage of limit

Pretty sure I wasn't talking about unlimited plans. I was talking about the speed of various technologies, whether ADSL @ 8-24Mbit/s or Cable at up to ~30Mbit/s.

again we are talking about the unlimited plans,FUPs come or not isn't the isuue.pure unlimited plans possiblity is what we are discussing

And I was simply saying that you should expect to see an FUP on any "unlimited" plan - and not just in India. It's not just about the cost of wholesale - it is about fair use. It just so happens that most Indian ISPs definition of "fair use" is... ludicrous.

the users may not use the big numbers but atleast the cabling needs to be done appropriately.you can't just provide internet through one adsl connection to a building.you will have to put fiber optics to provide members of that building 100mbps per month.

What I've been telling you is that most cabling is perfectly capable of handling much higher speeds than are being delivered as of now. And so my argument is that speed caps should be removed on data plans, while having a variety of well-priced unlimited plans to suit heavy and light consumers alike.

wat would be the price,would the other company like to use it or pay the amoung for it?????????????????????????

many questions arise

They don't have to, but the option would be there, and if it's cheaper than building themselves, why not?

yes but the legal right has very minimal cost.not the monthly premiums

The legal right is just a piece of paper. It doesn't automatically give every single Finnish household a free 1Mbit/s broadband connection. They still have to pay one of the ISPs for it. And the ISPs can charge whatever they want. As I have said previously - possibly in another thread - this is little more than what you have in India stating that the definition of broadband is 256kbit/s.

The only difference is that broadband has to be made available to every single household in the country, so that those that wish to connect to broadband will have a connection capable of at least 1mbit/s. In Finland, this was actually pretty much already done. To be frank, no-one in Finland actually gave a flying shit about this news.

by "your company" i meant anybody's company who provides shit speeds

Ok.

yes but even they can't provide unlimited net at high speeds because there is a risk that if people download more if they give them high speeds then they will be doomed but at the same time pay less

As I said, it all comes down to metrics.

well you were talking about providing all homes high speeds now so i just made the point

and without the high penetrations will current cost go down,no they won't,only slowly slowly

The current cost is obviously relative to the wholesale pricing, local loop, taxes etc that an ISP has to deal with. If NIXI per-GB pricing went away, this would relieve a huge burden. If the relative price per GB went down, FUPs could be relaxed or possibly abolished. If cablewalas weren't such greedy mother****ers, we could wire up societies in peace and our insurance premiums would hopefully fall.

but you were talking about now and now you are talking that when a billion people want it then cables will be done.you are debating your own points

and providing to a billion people isn't the topic of discussion but providing them high speeds unlimited at low cost is which is not possible for a long time which i have already mentioned before

A billion people may not have been the topic of discussion, but you brought it up. But we don't need to worry about a billion users at this time, so let us concentrate say on 100-200 million of them and work up.

well companies provide higher speeds but 256kbps broadband policy still effects companies decision as if for example 1mbps was the policy then we would have even higher speeds

Good. So the policy should be 1-2Mbit/s.

yes they don't pay for it but even if over the subsciptions time they download for example 200gbs per person at 1mbps rs.1000 plans then even with the high contention ratio the company would be at loss.its just a situation,now don't go proving me that normally nobody downloads that much as i know it.but with the ultra cheap plans wanted in india,it can be hard to make money

Contention ratio is NOT a good measurement to use because it's different for all types of service and has different meanings because depending on the delivery method due to the part of the network on which the contention ratio is applied. As of now, our network's maximum contention ratio is actually negative (1:2.67), but our contention ratio at our gateways is different - that's how I come up with the imaginary averages that we would prefer customers stay below, like 115GB for the 5mbit/s unlimited plan... this would be equal to a contention ratio of about 2.69:1 if you look at the data usage or a CSR of about 317kbit/s, or in other words, for every STM-1 we buy, we should supply a mere 417 customers.

Makes MTNL's 22:1 and Airtel's 17:1 look pathetic really, and the 50:1 regulations even worse, because they would amount to CSRs of 45kbit/s, 58kbit/s and 20kbit/s respectively. This basically means that while to be called broadband, your connection must be capable of 256kbit/s to the ISP, they only have to deliver dialup speeds from themselves to the internet.

they get to speeds but will they make money as i don't think with rs.1500 indian broadband will go far,the price will come down.now with that low price that suits india,will ISP's make money?

If the wholesale costs and overheads are low enough, why wouldn't they? As of now, we couldn't make money at that level because we expect our customers to be quite heavy users and thus, costing us fairly significant amounts on the wholesale level.

yes on high speeds 1:30-50 contention ratio is there but still they pay much.now in india people don't pay that much,look at the telecom industry

Uh... yes they do! For Rs2k in pretty much any European country you can get well over 10Mbits. In India, you'd be lucky to get 2. Granted, India does have the option of "broadband" for US$1-5 but the data caps hardly make it worthwhile unless you're a really light browser. My web browsing and leaving my computer on 24/7 consumes about 4-5GB per month (not counting any downloads).

Even 15€ in Finland (about... Rs900) got you about 2Mbit/s unlimited. It might be more now, I'd have to check.

yes but the tarriffs will also be super low

and again we were talking about the possibility now that you mentioned and i disagreed on

Maybe the tariffs will be low. We can only hope. But as of now, there is not much point in worrying about customers who don't need or won't use the product(s) we are offering.

It would be nice to... thrust upon people... this whole internet thing, but because of the funky laws we have a lot of logistical challenges to overcome first... and it would also be nice to be "in the black" financially. Right now I'm just spending lakhs and lakhs.

agree they won't as tarrifs are still high and many people don't even use or understand the net

Let's then stick to those that *do* understand the net and access it through some form of broadband, whatever it may be. This means that our current market is less than 100 million if we count ONLY conversions from dialup + existing broadband users. I myself only count about 10 million.

no i don't.you mentioned the one thing way up in the post and then mention at the end of the post that its in Finland

Yet the rest of the paragraphs in that part of the post talked about Finland. It's all about context

nah in my building there is a single phone dsl wire which all airtel,reliance,tata,mtnl can connect to.they only need to connect at the bottom and then they can provide dsl services.one is cablewala and nothing else.

I happen to know the MTNL absolutely do not share their last-mile copper with anyone under any circumstances, so there must be at least 2 cables going in to the building - one MTNL and one cablewala. Whether the latter is another copper-pair, Cat5e or COAX of some description is up to the cablewala.

 

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The average rate of income tax in Finland is 21.5%... BUT... this doesn't count the social security contributions and other deductions such as municipal taxes or church taxes (which you can opt out of but are paid by default) which make up the rest of the percentage. VAT is 22%, but food and transport are at lesser rates of 8% and 17%.

Right, so for the bulk of ppl the rate is somewhere closer to 30% than 40%. wiki places it at 46% tho :O

VAT at 22% is very high, its nearly double sales tax we have here and thats using the highest slab.

How all this relates to Finnish Broadband? Firstly, Finland does NOT have any government owned telecom companies.

I wonder whether you mean to say Finland does not have any govt owned telecom companies, any more. It's hard to believe that the intitial roll-outs would have been entirely private funded. This link says the Finnish PTT had a monopoly till 1992 (!)

What's the point of such high taxes then ? it surely does not go to the private companies does it. Part of those taxes goes towards infrastructure which gets unbundled for private players, costing them less to provide the service.

Secondly, most of the network providers have open networks and work with each other to ease the individual burdens.

This open networks thing has me wondering whether its mandated by govt in the first place. Why would companies willingly allow competitors into their networks otherwise. Peering works so long as parties are equal in size otherwise its a loser.

Thirdly, Finland is in a somewhat unique position that, when Telecommunications was just emerging in the first half of last century, Russia ruled Finland. And Russia liked to close down telecoms.

Finland was under Russian control in the 19th century but the attempts to russify it failed and ultimately they declared their independence in 1917. They also fought the Soviets during WW2. There might have been influence tho in other areas. The biggest fear Moscow had was that Finland would join NATO and put the defense of Leningrad at risk, but they never did (to this day) and acted as a 'friendly' neutral buffer, in exchange for not being annexed like the other Baltic states.

Implying the Finns had a market economy and were a democratic country in the usual sense, during the majority of the last century which is really what they would have needed to to advance in telecoms.

So at some points, there were as many as 800 separate operators in this tiny little country. Because of that, they have always worked together, because if they didn't, nothing would have worked at all. You might not be able to call your neighbour because his phone might be with a different operator or an operator which had just been squashed.

How many are left today in Finland ?

..must have had a lot of consolidation over the past few decades

India's situation now isn't too different. Many operators (not a bad thing in a country of 1 billion+ people), but the unfortunate thing is that none of them work together. MTNL would never give us rights to their last-mile copper for example, so we'd have to build our own or try using Tata's. Airtel had fiber running within meters of my apartment yet I couldn't get an Airtel line - probably not even a leased line. Cablewalas fight amongst themselves. Some are reasonable, many are not - they seem more interested in a quick buck than long term benefits and screw the actual ISPs to the wall with demands for high percentages. And unfortunately its these network operators which many ISPs rely on to deliver service.

I suppose they don't work together because they all hook up to providers with national coverage or at least to the nearest landing station and then run lines to their customers in pockets. They can't really peer with anyone because very few have much in the way of lines to begin with. Who are the national providers here ? If you were in the middle of the country and wanted intl connections, who would you get in touch with ?

The other part is we have yet to unbundle the last mile, all countries that did this step reaped the rewards (their customers certainly would have) very quickly especially in the far east.

Which brings me to the next point, the general trend from what I've seen among various countries is to go from govt. owned to disinvestment with unbundling and finally selling off entities and becoming entirely privately owned.

I was interested to know when you see this happening in India ? Has it already begun ?

The Finnish PTT & NZ telecom were govt owned once upon time, so what were the factors that lead to them becoming more privatised.

Part of me thinks that you have some inkling of this as a main reason to starting up Hayai, you (or your employer would have) calculated things would get easier in the future than they are today and want to be in the line when it happens

I can't figure out why leased lines are so expensive. Yes, I have been told that it's because of the SLA, but a 1000% or more increase in price seems difficult to justify to me. Are they hiring someone to continuously monitor my particular line? Not likely. However, what I'm talking about is the removal of speed caps from data plans. Setting aside the reliability, why do ISPs restrict a line to 2mbit/s when its capable of 6, 8, 10 or more, especially when the download limit is 5, 10 or even 20gb in a month? It would work out better for both consumers and the overall network congestion, of that I am sure.

They charge what they can get away with ?

Now, I might disagree a little bit with the competition thing (weird, eh?), and disagree that less regulation is needed.

What I mean is, there is plenty of retail competition (between ISPs, at least... cablewalas usually ensure that they are exclusive, so that could be a problem), but overall probably not much more is needed there. What *is* needed is some wholesale competition. We've all seen what has happened to SAT3/SAFE pricing since SEACOM arrived in Africa (despite SEACOM's numerous issues).

But even that is not the issue in India. What *is* the issue is that there are 9 cables, 3 operators. If a fourth operator were able to land a cable or take part in an existing one, and they offered access at lower margins (it *must* be possible to do because we've been offered bandwidth on the same cables at different prices AND we've been offered significant discounts merely for taking a 5-year contract instead of a 1-year contract), then ISPs would have a place where they can get bandwidth for much lower prices and so hopefully buy more.

Right, the wholesale market is not really blazing so can't expect things lower down to change. It could be very expensive to get more operators here unless there is enough demand or the regulations & paper work make it not worth the hassle.

Either way the current situation is advantageous to the existing operators so there might be making it harder for others, how they would do this is a mystery as they would not have been able to setup in the first place if that were the case. It would have been just govt lines in & out of the country. One thing is clear is that its easier for Indian companies than it is for foreign entities.

The TRAIs current price ceiling on wholesale pricing is now too high - I think it's still set at 2 crores per STM-1 but I've never been offered a price even close to that high - however I was enquiring in 2009 whereas that price came in to effect in 2006. If it was reduced to a ceiling of 50-70 lakhs per STM-1 (this would break the Rs10/GB barrier), then we might start seeing a few price changes on the retail side too because then even I/Hayai couldn't bitch and moan that the price per GB makes unlimited plans uneconomical. I think these things need to be reviewed and enforced yearly, and the government needs to tell VSNL/Tata, Reliance and Airtel that if they don't like it, they can **** off

Why would TRAI set it so high ?

Perhaps they could/should also take a look at the last mile situation and see about cleaning it up too. Make it easier for us to lay cables and/or ensure that cablewalas don't destroy our stuff. Or encourage the building of an open network - I could get behind that. Ahh what the hell... ours will be open. Any ISP who wants to lease our fiber can do so at equal cost.

So you will break with existing local tradition and go open ? Who would you be competing with in that case ?

And while they're at it, NIXI's tariffs - domestic bandwidth should be ludicrously cheap! In NZ, Hayai is paying the equivalent of about 15 paise per GB for peering bandwidth - this is the way it's supposed to be (but we pay much more for international though, so it sorta works itself out).

NIXI seems like govt barriers for the sake of justifying more govt intrusion. It almost seems like the ogvt wants to keep the price of broadband high, reasons for which i'm unsure about.

 

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Right, so for the bulk of ppl the rate is somewhere closer to 30% than 40%. wiki places it at 46% tho :O

Yeah, that's about accurate.

Finnish Social Security and Pension Contributions are quite high, often as much as the IT by itself. I still get bills for several-hundred euros a month from the company that was handling my pension fund for my own company in Finland even though I've left and closed almost everything except the company and bank accounts.

VAT at 22% is very high, its nearly double sales tax we have here and thats using the highest slab.

22% VAT on *most* products. Food and transport and a couple of small things are at 8 and 17%.

I wonder whether you mean to say Finland does not have any govt owned telecom companies, any more. It's hard to believe that the intitial roll-outs would have been entirely private funded. This link says the Finnish PTT had a monopoly till 1992 (!)

A bit like VSNL. But VSNL has never technically lost it's monopoly. If anyone wants access to a landing station, guess who they have to contact.

What's the point of such high taxes then ? it surely does not go to the private companies does it. Part of those taxes goes towards infrastructure which gets unbundled for private players, costing them less to provide the service.

I would hesitate to suggest that little-to-none of it goes to the network providers at all. The main this is that Finns use their networks (cell and internet) very heavily by comparison even with India, in that even your average grandma still has 8mbit/s ADSL or 10Mbit/s cable at home. She doesn't saturate it though, so it's not unprofitable.

Given that out of everyone I know in Finland, I know about 3 people in Finland who still have landlines, so the grandma probably gave up her landline phone in the mid-90's when Nokia was really booming and producing all those wonderful phones like the 3310 and has been using the cellphone exclusively since then and paying 30-40€ a month for it (and price parity would suggest that this would be like spending Rs500 per month in India... not that much, all things considered).

This open networks thing has me wondering whether its mandated by govt in the first place. Why would companies willingly allow competitors into their networks otherwise. Peering works so long as parties are equal in size otherwise its a loser.

I doubt it. I think it's a Finnish force of habit. When you consider that the phone networks were more-or-less regional back in the day (some networks are probably more popular in Turku than Oulu or Helsinki, for example)... with the smaller cities of Finland (eg, anything that is not Helsinki) being of not entirely dissimilar size, peering probably worked very well.

However, one must also consider that the free exchange of information has always been important in Finland, so peering can't lose really. Plus, the Finns are cost-conscious, just like you guys, and peering is supposed to be a way to keep costs down. I can imagine that if Elisa and Sonera didn't peer and the traffic had to be routed through Sweden or Estonia, there would be pandemonium.

Finland was under Russian control in the 19th century but the attempts to russify it failed and ultimately they declared their independence in 1917. They also fought the Soviets during WW2. There might have been influence tho in other areas. The biggest fear Moscow had was that Finland would join NATO and put the defense of Leningrad at risk, but they never did (to this day) and acted as a 'friendly' neutral buffer, in exchange for not being annexed like the other Baltic states.

Yes, Finnish Independence Day is the day before my birthday... however I'm talking about at the very beginning. Like Graham-Bell days. The Finns have always been good at driving invading forces out of their swamp (Suomi, the native name for the country, more or less means "the swamp") and therefore communications would have played a vital part in getting that done.

Implying the Finns had a market economy and were a democratic country in the usual sense, during the majority of the last century which is really what they would have needed to to advance in telecoms.

Not just that, but they have the added advantage of being home to Nokia.

How many are left today in Finland ?

..must have had a lot of consolidation over the past few decades

10 I guess... 5 big ones that I can think of off the top of my head. There are some smaller regional ISPs but not very many and even then they're usually affiliated somehow with one of the larger players.

I suppose they don't work together because they all hook up to providers with national coverage or at least to the nearest landing station and then run lines to their customers in pockets. They can't really peer with anyone because very few have much in the way of lines to begin with. Who are the national providers here ? If you were in the middle of the country and wanted intl connections, who would you get in touch with ?

Same as you would in Mumbai - Bharti, Tata or Reliance. You'll probably just have to pay extra for access to their domestic cables between Mumbai/Chennai/Kochi and where-ever unless you have some other arrangement. They may also deliver it to you for the same cost (I've not checked because that's not a route we're taking).

The other part is we have yet to unbundle the last mile, all countries that did this step reaped the rewards (their customers certainly would have) very quickly especially in the far east.

I agree. As I have said to solid_snake4rd at the end of my last post, MTNL does NOT allow use of it's copper, and it really should. In theory, it could potentially eliminate cablewalas altogether.

Which brings me to the next point, the general trend from what I've seen among various countries is to go from govt. owned to disinvestment with unbundling and finally selling off entities and becoming entirely privately owned.

I was interested to know when you see this happening in India ? Has it already begun ?

Been and gone. You already have a glut of private players, including but not limited to the big-3. I don't think MTNL/BSNL will go private anytime soon, mostly because I would imagine that the cleanup-job would be... big.

The Finnish PTT & NZ telecom were govt owned once upon time, so what were the factors that lead to them becoming more privatised.

I can't say about Finland, but in NZ it was definitely a mistake and a short-sighted decision for a quick few billion dollars or whatever it cost. It's just lucky that Telecom NZ was forced to keep all local calls free, otherwise we'd be screwed.

Telecom NZ is only just now working on upgrading the copper network: it's been sitting rotting away for 25 years. Players including but not limited to myself are putting in Fiber, and the NZ government is only planning for 100mbit/s by 2020.

This morning I got a politician to lend his support to have Hayai up and running with 100mbit/s by 2011 - basically by giving me the rights to lay last mile, which no-one has been able to do before. I have another meeting with the communications minister in Wellington to get it finalized.

Part of me thinks that you have some inkling of this as a main reason to starting up Hayai, you (or your employer would have) calculated things would get easier in the future than they are today and want to be in the line when it happens

Hayai is all me. I've never had an employer per-sé in India. I came, I saw the broadband situation, and I started working on the problem.

They charge what they can get away with ?

Sad, but true.

Right, the wholesale market is not really blazing so can't expect things lower down to change. It could be very expensive to get more operators here unless there is enough demand or the regulations & paper work make it not worth the hassle.

It's the landing rights and tangling with VSNL that make it painful for any foreign operator. Plus the regulations on foreign-ownership of Telecoms companies. I've reduced my stake in Hayai to 60% as of now and I plan to use some of that as collateral for our next VC fund.

I think however, that international capacity is sufficient for now. It's just that it needs to be sold at a price which is advantageous to both ISP and consumer. Current pricing is neither.

Either way the current situation is advantageous to the existing operators so there might be making it harder for others, how they would do this is a mystery as they would not have been able to setup in the first place if that were the case. It would have been just govt lines in & out of the country. One thing is clear is that its easier for Indian companies than it is for foreign entities.

Very True. AT&T tried. Reach has to use Tata.

Why would TRAI set it so high ?

The decisions are so slow that their idea of good pricing is several years out of date.

So you will break with existing local tradition and go open ? Who would you be competing with in that case ?

For last-mile, probably the cablewalas. Ideally what would happen though is that other providers would see what we're providing and we could form a consortium to buy 2, 3, 4, 5 times as much bandwidth and share the discount.

NIXI seems like govt barriers for the sake of justifying more govt intrusion. It almost seems like the ogvt wants to keep the price of broadband high, reasons for which i'm unsure about.

NIXI is just... stupid. It's a good idea (peering) gone horribly wrong (pricing).

 

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I would hesitate to suggest that little-to-none of it goes to the network providers at all. The main this is that Finns use their networks (cell and internet) very heavily by comparison even with India, in that even your average grandma still has 8mbit/s ADSL or 10Mbit/s cable at home. She doesn't saturate it though, so it's not unprofitable.

Right, but you said earlier that the infrastructure in Finland is good because they pay very high taxes. Those taxes would have helped to build up infrastructure upto the period of privatisation and not beyond as it would have been down to the private companies to then maintain the existing networks and grow them further. It's tempting to think that the infrastructure was good enough that when the Finnish PTT eventually loosened up that there wasn't too much left to do and profits alone took care of maintenance & future upgrades. But aren't wired networks still quite capital intensive, or am i mistaken ?

If its capital intensive then that would have a direct bearing on how much consumers pay for broadband and prices could not have dropped to as low as they currently are. I suppose a smaller population helps here as it places a natural limit to how large the network needs to be and its rate of growth.

However if all lines that were to be laid were done ie the capital intensive operations completed and the country was wired so to speak then privatisation would yield lower prices & better service in the future.

However, one must also consider that the free exchange of information has always been important in Finland, so peering can't lose really.

Plus, the Finns are cost-conscious, just like you guys, and peering is supposed to be a way to keep costs down. I can imagine that if Elisa and Sonera didn't peer and the traffic had to be routed through Sweden or Estonia, there would be pandemonium.

The Finns have always been good at driving invading forces out of their swamp (Suomi, the native name for the country, more or less means "the swamp") and therefore communications would have played a vital part in getting that done.

I'm wondering if the main driver for this openness through the last century was national security ?

Being a small country next to Russia would have given the Finns an extra reason to be more wired than other countries. Everything else then follows as secondary benefits, freedom of info + lower shared costs etc.

So instead of limiting growth in telecoms, did the Russians or fear of them actually bring about the opposite ?

Yes, Finnish Independence Day is the day before my birthday... however I'm talking about at the very beginning. Like Graham-Bell days.

That was a long time ago and considering Finland went independant in 1917, there's really been no external barrier to having more telecom companies at all or was there ?

Those 800 companies you mentioned remind of the nascent auto industry in the US which at the time had over a 100 companies making cars.

Not just that, but they have the added advantage of being home to Nokia.

Going through Nokia's history makes it sound like they were the equivalent of Tata in India.

Same as you would in Mumbai - Bharti, Tata or Reliance. You'll probably just have to pay extra for access to their domestic cables between Mumbai/Chennai/Kochi and where-ever unless you have some other arrangement. They may also deliver it to you for the same cost (I've not checked because that's not a route we're taking).

Its cheaper for you to have your own lines to connect cities ?

I agree. As I have said to solid_snake4rd at the end of my last post, MTNL does NOT allow use of it's copper, and it really should. In theory, it could potentially eliminate cablewalas altogether.

That's one way to keep the govt employees in control of their network.

Been and gone. You already have a glut of private players, including but not limited to the big-3. I don't think MTNL/BSNL will go private anytime soon, mostly because I would imagine that the cleanup-job would be... big.

Ahh, nobody private is interested in doing it then ?

yet another 'excellent' reason to keep it public for longer. This is bad because it means there is an active interest to keep things primitive just to hold onto their jobs. Tho they have a requirement to be profitable so I suppose they will do the least to comply.

I can't say about Finland, but in NZ it was definitely a mistake and a short-sighted decision for a quick few billion dollars or whatever it cost. It's just lucky that Telecom NZ was forced to keep all local calls free, otherwise we'd be screwed.

Why was it a mistake ? Was it done too quickly ?

I guess if the rates did not go down after it could be considered a mistake.

The other thing i've noticed with the new world, Americas + OZ & NZ is this phenomenon of free local calls. The only way they could get a network up and keep ppl paying is to charge for long distance. Now in India, earlier that got taken to a regrettable extreme where it was exorbitant to make intl trunk calls. The idea was that the tariffs on intl traffic subsidised the local calls which were cheaper in comparison and when they opened up in the early 90s it was not unusual to get lots of free talk time. All that came to an end when India signed some intl. telecom treaty which forced parity on intl call rates, same price both ways.

Telecom NZ is only just now working on upgrading the copper network: it's been sitting rotting away for 25 years. Players including but not limited to myself are putting in Fiber, and the NZ government is only planning for 100mbit/s by 2020.

Sounds like it opened up in NZ too fast.

It's the landing rights and tangling with VSNL that make it painful for any foreign operator. Plus the regulations on foreign-ownership of Telecoms companies.

ok

I think however, that international capacity is sufficient for now. It's just that it needs to be sold at a price which is advantageous to both ISP and consumer. Current pricing is neither.

Which is troubling because if intl. capacity with just three operators is 'sufficient for now 'then there is no profit incentive at all to add more intl operators

..leave alone tangling with VSNL or limitations in foreign ownership.

The decisions are so slow that their idea of good pricing is several years out of date.

Yeah, this would partly explain selling mobile spectrum in 2008 at 2002 prices

For last-mile, probably the cablewalas. Ideally what would happen though is that other providers would see what we're providing and we could form a consortium to buy 2, 3, 4, 5 times as much bandwidth and share the discount.

This sounds like a good idea for smaller ones but i think you will face resistance from little larger ones. They would see you out to eat their lunch.