mgcarley
Founder, Hayai Broadband
I thought TRAI required ISPs to deliver 80% of advertised speeds at any given time...
They do - except people often neglect to remember the follow-on sentence in that clause which says "up to the ISP node", which means that this clause is almost always interpreted incorrectly.
There is no stipulation that says they have to provide 80% of the speed to another network or even to any given point within their own network, excepting the whole 1:50 contention ratio rule, which is a separate thing in itself.
So, as the OP is in New Delhi, this means that he should be able to get at least 9.6mbit/s to a Reliance server at a Reliance NOC or the cable operator controlling his area in New Delhi, so if Reliance has a server in New Delhi with speedtest mini on it, you should reasonably expect the aforementioned 9.6mbit/s (or better).
Unfortunately to use speedtest.net's server in New Delhi, traffic must get to either Hughes network or Vodafone's network, which means traversing a peering link (either private or at NIXI), or the public Internet - networks which they have almost no control over. If he receives 0.24mbit/s (12mbits / 50 max contention) to that server, Reliance is, in theory, not breaking the rules (even though at those speeds the entire network would be running at 100% capacity and probably due to melt down at any time).
Even then, given that the speedtest.net servers are public servers, that introduces some more inaccuracies because, what if the capacity of that server is too heavily utilized? What if it's on a 100mbit/s connection and I'm using 92mbit/s while you are also trying to run your speedtest and only receiving 8mbit/s (and assuming everyone else in India is asleep)? No rules are being broken, it just means that the server is overloaded at that particular point in time.
What the clause originally seems to be targeted at is more of a line maintenance issue than a quality of service issue. As we know, DSL (by far the most popular access method in India) signals deteriorate over distances, plus when you add kinks and splices and other anomalies in to wiring, it decreases further, and so what they're doing is essentially stipulating that the speeds on offer are limited by the technology and the distance between their premises and the roadside cabinet that supplies their service, and as such in order for the provider to offer this service to this customer, his line should be sufficiently short enough and the cabling good enough quality (not too old, no corrosion, no band-aid fixes etc) that his modem can sync at 80% of the rate.
I believe this is one of the reasons that some people get refused plan upgrades: they ask for the upgrade, then the feasibility study shows that they're say 5km from their nearest exchange, so the line barely eeks out 2mbit/s but then they want 4mbit/s and the line can't support it, so, sorry, that plan can't be offered to you right now. Not so much of an issue with FTTB networks, as the copper is not more than 90m (else it just doesn't work).
But, despite the misinterpretations and everything else, you can be sure that the engineers would be forced to push the technology beyond reasonable limits if this regulation didn't exist (...causing huge problems and screwing up the customers who would be trying to use ADSL at like 10km from the exchange)
They do - except people often neglect to remember the follow-on sentence in that clause which says "up to the ISP node", which means that this clause is almost always interpreted incorrectly.
There is no stipulation that says they have to provide 80% of the speed to another network or even to any given point within their own network, excepting the whole 1:50 contention ratio rule, which is a separate thing in itself.
So, as the OP is in New Delhi, this means that he should be able to get at least 9.6mbit/s to a Reliance server at a Reliance NOC or the cable operator controlling his area in New Delhi, so if Reliance has a server in New Delhi with speedtest mini on it, you should reasonably expect the aforementioned 9.6mbit/s (or better).
Unfortunately to use speedtest.net's server in New Delhi, traffic must get to either Hughes network or Vodafone's network, which means traversing a peering link (either private or at NIXI), or the public Internet - networks which they have almost no control over. If he receives 0.24mbit/s (12mbits / 50 max contention) to that server, Reliance is, in theory, not breaking the rules (even though at those speeds the entire network would be running at 100% capacity and probably due to melt down at any time).
Even then, given that the speedtest.net servers are public servers, that introduces some more inaccuracies because, what if the capacity of that server is too heavily utilized? What if it's on a 100mbit/s connection and I'm using 92mbit/s while you are also trying to run your speedtest and only receiving 8mbit/s (and assuming everyone else in India is asleep)? No rules are being broken, it just means that the server is overloaded at that particular point in time.
What the clause originally seems to be targeted at is more of a line maintenance issue than a quality of service issue. As we know, DSL (by far the most popular access method in India) signals deteriorate over distances, plus when you add kinks and splices and other anomalies in to wiring, it decreases further, and so what they're doing is essentially stipulating that the speeds on offer are limited by the technology and the distance between their premises and the roadside cabinet that supplies their service, and as such in order for the provider to offer this service to this customer, his line should be sufficiently short enough and the cabling good enough quality (not too old, no corrosion, no band-aid fixes etc) that his modem can sync at 80% of the rate.
I believe this is one of the reasons that some people get refused plan upgrades: they ask for the upgrade, then the feasibility study shows that they're say 5km from their nearest exchange, so the line barely eeks out 2mbit/s but then they want 4mbit/s and the line can't support it, so, sorry, that plan can't be offered to you right now. Not so much of an issue with FTTB networks, as the copper is not more than 90m (else it just doesn't work).
But, despite the misinterpretations and everything else, you can be sure that the engineers would be forced to push the technology beyond reasonable limits if this regulation didn't exist (...causing huge problems and screwing up the customers who would be trying to use ADSL at like 10km from the exchange)
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