I am from Nigeria and i have to agree with you, The ISP i am using offers 8mbps for 84,000 Nigerian Naira per Month ($534) which is essentially 28256 Rupees here in a country where an average workers makes less than $1 (157 Nigerian Naira) a day. I am currently using a 2mbps connection for 8,000 Nigerian Naira per Month ($50) which is 2691 Rupees. You guys don't have it bad over there, trust me.
This is a good news for you.
Wait for May 11.
allAfrica.com: West Africa: Bandwidth Cost to Drop As U.S.$650 Million Undersea Cable Goes Live
It may somewhat cut down end user price.
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Even in our country there is not much difference, we also have to pay above 3k for 2mbps.
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If Reliance aren't idiots, there's no reason LTE can't be successful. Mukesh has spent (and borrowed) a whole lot more money than Airtel so he's kind of got to make a splash.
Yeah. They aren't idiots. They are investing $1b for LTE but they will keep all cards in their hands. They will not let to go their all money waste but they also will not provide their resources at cheap rate. You know LTE instruments are very costly which will definitely affect end user price.
BSNL has no money. Ideally, BSNL should be privatized and turned in to a network/infrastructure company and leave the services up to everyone else. If they did that, they'd get revenue from the same cables several times over, thus solving the money problem and allowing them to invest properly instead of having different equipment in each circle causing problems.
I know BSNL is surviving nowadays but it is capable to change its financial product. I think broadband product was great but because of poor service and high bills, they lost a lot customers. If they manage to offer FTTH before other companies' launch at good rate with good service, it may change situation. They lost much in wimax product also. Recently, they have requested for refund of BWA spectrum I do not know it is a threat to avoid 2g spectrum auction or needs finance back or an excuse of non standardize frequency. I think instruments are available in the market with that frequency.
Wimax is more expensive than fiber (per megabit) - quite significantly. A single base-station is the better part of $2,000 (for a basic one - and you still have to connect that to some form of wired connection) and might serve a few dozen customers, whereas for about 5x the price I can serve around 20x the number of customers with much higher speeds on fiber (FTTB).
And here's the problem with Wimax/3G/4G/WiFi:
1. Most apartments & houses have bars on the
windows, which really stuff up any kind of radio signal.
2. When you can get a signal, the speed is not that great - the output is "up to" 30mbit/s but experience suggests it's a lot less - 4mbit/s if you're lucky, less if there is any kind of significant load on the network or base station (unlimited plans + many concurrent connections from applications such as bittorrent = high cpu = problems). Don't get me wrong - I love Bittorrent and use it regularly BUT it's just not great for performance on wireless networks.
Everyone proposing to set up fiber nationwide is doing so but it's mainly long-haul stuff, not last-mile. Without a decent last-mile, the customer is screwed. BSNL & MTNL are both doing FTTH but the footprints are limited and unfortunately the plans don't make sense for almost anyone. They could speed up adoption if they lowered the prices a bit (but then again, they can't afford to because of the money situation. Catch 22 situation, really).
If fiber is cheap, why don't they implement? I am not saying you are wrong.
In any technology whether it is wimax, LTE, 3g or any other else, CPE and instruments are costly. I have read somewhere government were discussing to make CPE and instrument tax free to cut down price of internet. I don't know it is implement or when will it be implemented?
About Wimax, I have already told my experience of internet regarding interference. Free licensed ISPs are already facing it. Even
tata communication or reliance hold licensed wimax spectrum they face some issue as I experience with tata wimax. I was getting high latency from default gateway as well as any website. It depends upon couple of factors like low signal, poor speed management system at tata side(high 1: ratio) causing download speed variation ranging from 10k to 28k(for 256kbps tariff). I didn't get 32kbps or more ever with tata wimax. I tested a lot during late night hours and day time when I expect less peak requirement but not good performance. I did not have clear LOS and I had numbers of tower near to my location(very close).
I know speeds are wasted in wireless communication. If high speed is given to customers, there is huge variation between at node and customer's location.
Again, Reliance is investing in LTE not in FTTH. If reliance invest in FTTH rather than LTE, FTTH will be better performance wise just because they have strong global backbone according to me. No need to worry. What would you say?
FTTH establishment is a headache to setup last mile but anyone has to start rolling the the fiber all over the nation. They can not speed up but at least they can roll in major cities not in every city or village. How long have we to rely on coppers while whole world is adopting fiber??
if it is Catch-22, anyone has to come ahead to change for development. In this situation, government has to play important role. No private company or its investors waits longer for its return. Government is expecting it by 2014 even though they are willing to invest 6k crore. They must be kidding for this kind of long time.
