hplp20 said:
The present definition of 256 Kbps always on connection for
broadband is too meager as compared to international developments.
There is a school of thought, which advocates that many bandwidth
hungry applications are not getting developed as they see no
business model due to restrictive capacity of the Internet in India. A
group of consumers feel that broadband must be re-defined to
support minimum download speed of atleast 2 Mbps per subscriber.
According to them, it will drive service providers to upgrade their
network and fuel development of many user friendly applications.
The use of high speed Internet will help to really explore potential of
broadband and will result in enhanced demand of such services.
Views of stakeholders are invited.
From TRAI's consultation paper on national broadband plan.
http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/ConsultationPapers/202/consultationon10june10.pdf
I think this is being looked at in the wrong way. You are all looking to the government to regulate the minimum speed of broadband to be 512k or 2mbit/s, and so this is all you ask for from your provider.
Let's take the infamous Finland as an example here. By now most of you will know that they have declared at least 1mbit/s internet to be a right and that access speeds of at least 1mbit/s be available to 100% of people and so on an so forth... however, due to competition in that country (for a mere population of 5 million), ISPs have been having "pissing competitions" to see who can offer the fastest access - Sonera is currently leading with 1Gbit/s to the home, but it's hard to find less than 8mbit/s on
ADSL or 10mbit/s on anything else
Laajakaista - edullinen ja nopea!
Laajakaista — Yksityiset — Elisa.fi
https://www4.sonera.fi/kauppa/pcOrBroadband.do?pcOrBroadband=broadband (Type in Mariankatu 26 to the "Katuosoite" box and 00170 in to the "Postinumero" box).
Maxinetti - Tulevaisuus näkyy jo - Maxinetti Laajakaista
S A U N A L A H T I › Säästöä joka minuutti.
S A U N A L A H T I › Säästöä joka minuutti.
DNA - DNA Laajakaista
(etc)
And while some ISPs to have 1, 2, and 5mbit/s options available, 10mbit/s+ is usually only about 5 euros more a month - if at all (in Saunalahti's case, 1, 4 and 10mbit/s services are THE SAME PRICE), so it's hard to find anyone actually on those lower speed plans - and now ISPs are offering what they call "Tuplakaista" which means they give you broadband (10mbit/s+ in both cases I found) plus mobile broadband on a USB stick at 2mbit/s for 5 euros more than the 10mbit/s service by itself.
sanke1 said:
For how many more years will India plan to remain on 2 mbps speeds? World is moving on to 20 mpbs now. As usual we always play catch up but never catch on.
Proper infrastructure overhaul is needed to increase speed capacity along with last mile wiring.
Domestic capacity between cities is fairly readily available, however each provider has it's own last mile - this is a huge problem.
warthog said:
i hope trai bans fups and bandwidth throttling and min definition of BB @ 1mbps and NIB sharing by all isps to reduce tarrifs
mgcarly plz give your inputs
If you want my inputs, I need to be informed
NIB is already largely available to anyone who wants to lease capacity on it: this is not the problem. Last mile is NOT available to anyone who wants to use it, but last mile needs to be in order to encourage competition.
IMO, BSNL/MTNL should merge, and the resulting company should concentrate on being infrastructure providers only (LLU), so that private players can offer services on this infrastructure to every home in India for a fixed cost per customer.
ItsMe said:
Broadband may soon get cheaper
Broadband may soon get cheaper - The Economic Times
Broadband access and usage may become more affordable as the government is likely to review duties levied on inputs and finished products used in providing broadband and internet services, Modems and
routers used for internet and broadband may also become cheaper as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended 100% depreciation in the first year. On Wednesday, Indian telecom regulator issued recommendations on the national broadband plan aiming at inclusive growth, easy access to high speed data and increase broadband penetration in the country. The Indian government would spend around Rs 60,000 crore on setting up the broadband network as a loan to be financed by USO fund. A target of providing 75 million broadband connections has been kept by 2012 and 160 million broadband connections by the year 2014. The optical fibre network would support huge bandwidth requirement for provision of broadband and facilitate broadband growth. TRAI feels this would increase GDP growth as the recommendations quote a study highlighting a 1.38% increase in the per capita GDP growth in developing economies with 10% increase in broadband penetration.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm I've remarked on this - it won't get much cheaper, but you should start getting higher speeds for the same price. What the TRAI also needs to do is reduce the ceiling on international bandwidth and tell NIXI to **** off with it's stupid per-GB tariffs. If Indian ISPs didn't have to trombone so much traffic through Singapore because of the stupid peering situation, much money and resource could be saved.
admin said:
neh. these are real developments that are taking place now.
now that they have pretty much sorted out the mobile market, they are targeting the broadband market.
even though they have left DTH and CAS in a huge mess.
itzmynet said:
Broadband connection may be defined as
“A data connection using any technology that is able to support interactive services including Internet access and support minimum download speed of 512 Kilo bits per second (Kbps)”. It is to be noted that the upload speed will atleast be half the download speed.
This is ludicrous. There are almost no technologies which support such ratios! ADSL at rull speeds works out to be nearly 8:1 download:upload ratios.
admin said:
crap. so they are targeting 512kbps minimum now?
This isn't such bad news, IMO.
hplp20 said:
So, from January 1, 2011, none of the providers can call 256 Kbps as broadband. Finally. Still, they could have made it 1 Mbps, that would have brought 2 Mbps plans that go to 1 Mbps after fair usage policy. Guess there is no point in Airtel forcing customers to switch to the impatience 'broadband' plans anymore.
They could have, but there are two issues here:
1. Your access would still be 256kbit/s but not called broadband.
2. "Broadband" with "Unlimited usage" would virtually cease to exist at the price points they currently offer.
amish said:
Haha, so I hope that MTNL will be forced to upgrade my unltd 320kbps plan to 512kbps at no extra charge
Or they will leave it at 320kbit/s and just stop calling it Broadband.
abidh1992 said:
I thought they'll do a minimum 2mbps at least.. But! TRAI proved again they're.......:wall:
FUP...lives for now! :ishock:
It's a nice idea, but IMO government regulation shouldn't as necessary as you all think, citing my Finland example above.
amish said:
2mbps i doubt...at this rate even 1mbps will be after 5-7 years now.
Not if I have anything to do with it.
hplp20 said:
They say that India is lagging behind, higher speed is required now, but still 512 Kbps. Anyway, no more 256 Kbps after fup. But they do say that upload speed should at least be half of download speed. Don't know how they are going to do that for 4+ Mbps connections.
On almost *any* technology.
meetdilip said:
Good move by TRAI. Though I should say router and other CPE are cheaper if you get from BSNL. Broadband penetration will the first priority of telecom department. Speed won't be increased in near future.
Problem then is quality.
auroraPWN said:
Stupid government policies and these useless bureaucrats are just spoiling the nation. More than 50% of the population is illetrate and more than 70% living BTPL. When will the ministers knock some sense into them? i am not pro-BJP but as far as i remember during the polls BJP announced in its communication policy that 2mbps would be made the minimum broadband speed.... cheap congress still sitting on 512kbps... how do they expect the nation to move ahead with these pathetic policies formed by them ?? damn TRAI damn
DOT.... we need a new regulatory body for communications in this country to be headed by some constitutionally empowered authority not headed by the government......
These are just numbers. 2mbit/s as the minimum definition of broadband is all good and well, but then you'd find that nobody could afford broadband. Internet access yes, but anything labeled as "Broadband" no. There is a
crucial difference. Finland at least got the wording right in that they say that Internet Access should be at least 1mbit/s... but Finland is already one of those places where you can get FTTH even if you live deep in the middle of the forest, so...
RDBMAC said:
TRAI Came out with NBP - stressing more on 3G than DSL, saying ADSL can offer speed upto 2Mbit/s !! ha ha ha !!!
with less spectrum operators can not offer unlimited plans on 3G to save their networks from congestion. With VDSL(xDSL) BSNL is already offering upto 24Mbit/s. TRAI does not stress the fibre optic thing!
I think people are sadly misinformed about how 3G works. 5MHz does not mean you'll get less speed than if the operators were given 10MHz: 5MHz per channel is sufficient to deliver what is needed at decent speeds, but operators have to ensure that their networks are super-efficient. This is a good thing, as it allows for developments to happen in the future.
With ADSL and VDSL, I've recently been arguing that speed caps should simply be lifted, so that users get the full-speed that the line supports (whether it offers 2mbit/s or 20mbit/s) and the ISPs should simply sell data and a reasonable rate. This would also allow ISPs to determine where they need to concentrate efforts as far as maintenence and capacity provisioning is concerned.
Speed caps should only be enforced or implemented for flat-rate plans (although I think "unlimited" is a flawed business model, but that's not the point here), but even then flat-rate should only really be offered at slightly higher price points. Why? Half the reason India's broadband is so slow at the moment is because everyone is sitting on 256kbit/s unlimited, which means the network is congested *all the time*.
If you got say 50GB for the same price (that would be the same usage as leaving your PC on 14-15 hours a day downloading on 256kbit/s), but at much faster speeds, then your experience on the whole would be better because usage is "spikey" - you download 1GB in a few minutes and then the line sits idle for the rest of the time - and potentially there is a reduction in energy usage because you don't need to leave your PC on overnight anymore. Furthermore, no more worrying about contention ratios and so on.
Furthermore, then flat-rate plans starting at say 2-2.5k would be able to give 5 or even 10mbit/s as the starting speed and you'd actually get it. As a result of this, there would be less worrying about government regulation surrounding minimum speeds (and that's all you guys get at the moment) and instead of having price-wars about "who can offer 256k at the cheapest price", perhaps we ISPs can start having speed-wars about "who can deliver the fastest access".
And this is where our magical fiber-optics comes in. I very much hope that any new government-built last-mile fiber is open to all! Local Loop unbundling could do so much for India, but if BSNL/MTNL are the only ones who will get access to these NOFA/SOFA run networks, then there will continue to be problems with providing access to everyone for years - even decades - to come. FTR, India is one of the last countries in the world where the local-loop is NOT unbundled.
rockingtushar said:
2Mbps by 2015. The world will be at atleast 50 mbps by then. This again proves that TRAI is run by white haired guys in their late 50s who think that high speed internet should come at a premium. Its high time people in India bust this myth that old people are the best people for the top jobs.
Look at Manmohan Singh in his 50s he started the liberalisation of Indian Economy. Now in his late 70s he is a servant of Sonia Gandhi.
Late 50's? Clearly you've never met any of these guys. More like 60's and 70's. I suggest anyone interested in telecommunications who is in their 20's/early 30's start getting in to positions in the TRAI *NOW*.
meetdilip said:
Price will automatically come down as broadband penetration increases and more and more people opt for broadband. In near future, ADSL wired connection will be like land line. Even these days, people are using mobile phone to access net and people will go for mobile and wireless connections.
Price, not so much. Value for money - maybe. But then again, will it really? India went from about 6 million at EOY 2008 to 10 million at EOY 2010... but FUPs are now the normal situation, prices of "additional data" haven't changed much, 512k and 1mbit/s "unlimited" without FUP have virtually disappeared from almost all ISPs... I think overall we're worse off than before.
rockingtushar said:
We are screwed. We will be stuck at 512kbps till 2015 like an overwhelming majority of the country is stuck at 256kbps now. The ISPs will offer insane speeds with ridiculous FUPs. Look at how much progress have we made since the last National Broadband plan in 2004. Thats right zerop.
I wouldn't say zero. There has been a lot of progress - just not nearly as much as one would hope. Unfortunately, this new broadband plan seems to rely heavily on the mobile market adopting 3G. This is the ONLY way they can even think of reaching their 2014 targets of 75+ million *broadband* subscribers - no way in hell we can build 65 million wired connections in 4 years, even with 1.2 million people on the job (as the document suggests).
Yes, they want this vital infrastructure which requires the use of special equipment and microscopes to splice fiber to be built by 1.2 million people who presumably are not trained yet. I can imagine that many people doing digging and whatnot, but fiber-splicing is an art, and a single splice for one house can take a full hour.
Rock21 said:
I just find it funny to see the government say - " India is developing in IT field"
WTF ! A country where 512 kbps is called as broadband can it be regarded as IT-developed !!!
The scenario is really pathetic in India.
TRAI earlier said that it is planning to make 2mbps as minimum broadband speed, and now they have come up with this 512 scheme !!
Eventually it will, but relying on government regulation for determining the minimum speed is faulty thinking (as I've mentioned above). Stop worrying about the minimum speed you can get and just get on with telling the ISPs what you really want.
ISPs technologically speaking have got the required stuff already in place to give 5mbit/s+ to everyone - whether it's ADSL or cable, that sort of speed is already built out to most broadband-enabled homes in India, but a major part of the problem is simply that capacity to the rest of the world is currently too expensive and peering is too expensive, so providing these kinds of speeds (with "unlimited plans" as the baseline) are not economical as yet, but if ISPs simply sold data this problem goes away.
Additionally, sitting there as an "armchair activist" really doesn't help: in fact, it's more part of the harmful than helpful, because it shows that people are agnostic enough towards the problem that it doesn't concern anyone greatly enough to do anything about it - except moan about it.
Of course, I'm guilty of this too, however for the moment my situation is out of my control.
rj27 said:
TRAI is working for the companies like AIRTEL & Reliance as they have said in their comments sent earlier on the consultation paper that the new definition should be 512kbps while BSNl has said make it 512kbps by DEC 2010, 2mbps by DEC. 2011 & 4mbps by 2014. Bsnl is the largest broadband provider with 75 % user + MTNl - 10%. When they are in a position to provide these rates, why has TRAI accepted the comments of REL+AIRTEL.
Could it be because Reliance and Airtel also own about 70% of the International capacity between them? (I think it works out to about T-30/B-60/R-10 between
Tata, Bharti and Reliance).
rj27 said:
We have 20-25 TBps international bandwidth but not even using 1 TBps out of that. TRAI has still not addressed the main issue of peering & prices of International bandwidth.
The policy maker working in TRAI on the one weeping that KOREA,JAPAN is giving 100mbps, this country that much & blaah-2 !! & when it came to them to change the scenario now they come up with policy serving only to those greedy ISPs who are just interested in Setting lower & lower FUPs.
Korea and Japan are very different to India.
Firstly, most of that speed is domestic, even though they have many multiples the amount of capacity going to the US as India does - hundreds of terabits - and it's priced to move at maybe Rs150 per mbit/s per month. It is well over Rs4000 per mbit/s per month in India.
Secondly, despite all this capacity being available, most of the stuff they want to access is hosted physically in their own country, whereas in India that amount is less than 20%.
Thirdly, both of those countries have peering ecosystems which have been set up properly, not per GB as stupid NIXI has. Peering is supposed to be a bi-lateral agreement between parties with approximately the same traffic ratios, but they treat it as if they're selling normal broadband access.
Fourthly, most of their users don't sit downloading bloody torrents all day - their usage patterns are vastly different to India. (Like Finland, I've also lived in Japan. I remember 8mbit/s flat-rate plans coming out back in 2001!!)
As for the International Bandwidth, yes, the price ceiling desperately needs revision. I would suggest at least a 75% reduction effective immediately (I can already get about 50% if I subscribe to that price for 5 years but in 5 years, that rate is bound to be rather huge by comparison. I think if we can get wholesale bandwidth prices down to MAXIMUM Rs500 per mbit/s per month (to Europe) and Rs300 per mbit/s (to Singapore/US) per month, then India can really start flexing it's broadband muscle, and FUPs can start going the way of the dodo - or at least fade in to irrelevence (with a FUP of 300GB per month, we wouldn't have to worry as much about FUPs at all, since only the highest users would even come close to hitting it).
