Just to revisit the old thread.
I feel pained to see (and read) that there are lost
business opportunities because the bandwidth was not sufficient. There are no real credible alternatives to the existing crop of ISP's with their attendant issues and dickheadedness.
The way I see it, it seems to be one of those neverending things. The "best" ISPs in India tend to be limited in some way - either they're local ISPs or they have nationwide coverage, but in limited pockets (such as Airtel).
The fully nationwide ISPs like BSNL or MTNL could spend $250,000 on a big-ass core
router (or 8 little ones), but the number of users they have could saturate it in a day. I'm not saying they shouldn't do that (they absolutely should), but for them there is little value.
They can't really increase tariffs, so that wipes a few crores off the balance sheet for very little gain - there isn't really anyone who can compete with them on the level required for them to move their asses yet.
I fail to understand this; why are most ISP's loath to provide better services? Does it mean more investment in the human resources? Train people more effectively would mean higher overheads? Or does the existing system offer them more incentives to rip off their existing customers?
Human Resources in India are cheap as chips. $250,000 for one router or 25 more staff? Jobs, of course! And as far as I know if employees are put through training programs, it's not always possible to keep them. And even if you do, you have to pay them more because they are more valuable. Catch-22.
Of course, if companies paid decent salaries in India, then this would be less of an issue. I've been offered jobs for everything between 1.8 and 11 lakhs per year - In India I could probably live on about 4 or 5, but seriously, who are they kidding?
That and if companies treated people properly (from my perspective, workers get treated like dogs by many companies), then maybe this would be less of an issue. In my opinion, offering incentives for upskilling isn't necessarily a bad way to do things, and in theory there's nothing stopping a company from asking an employee to stay for 12-24 months if they pass some course.
Of course, then there's the quality of the courses, but we won't go there.
I have read about the likes of say Tikona Broadband (WTF- the name sucks) who are interested to set up a Wimax like feature. A wireless "broadband" barely suffices- good for initial roll out but they are not willing to invest from a longer term perspective. Maybe it is the Indian customer who is perhaps to be blamed. We don't see a value in "investing" in resources for a long term perspective either or pay higher upfront charges.
This is a big problem. In many countries you can get away with a $100 or $200 installation fee, but in India it has to be $10 or $20. Which comes back to the point: how in the hell do we pay the people who actually do the work? If it takes them 2 hours, there goes our $10 install fee.
For example, while I understand the need for "higher speeds" and "unlimited" Internet, but try selling this concept to my folks who are steeped in the notion that if it is not broken, there is no need to fix it. It took me a hell of a time to get the telephone line fixed up, the pairing at the exchange sorted out, the General Manager shouted at and took some phone calls to BSNL's corporate office and to Circle Manager with ample screenshots to buttress my claim.
In India there is DEFINITELY the need for faster Internet, but frankly I think "unlimited" is bull. It's a bad business model, for starters, but the data plans available in most countries are more expensive than they should be.
In India this seems to be because ISPs nickel and dime the customers who, apparentely want to be nickel and dimed. It *sounds* better when you can "control" your usage by being charged like 50ps per MB, rather than being charged Rs100 per GB, but these days a single page can consume 1MB of data, so 200 of those and you've surpassed what you would have otherwise spent.
Of course, people are so concerned about getting maximum value that *it seems* they would rather use just 200MB of data and pay Rs100 for it than be charged Rs100 and have the OPTION of using up to 1024MB of data, even if they don't use that much - because if they don't use all 1024MB, whatever remains unused is considered to be wasted.
I'd rather make a couple of rupees per GB but have each one accounted for than have to worry about users who consume more than their fair share and ruin the experience for everyone else.
The problem is that users have come to expect "unlimited" options to be available, and then go on to bitch when they are subjected to FUPs or traffic shaping and other such nonsense, leaving the customer with a sour experience using that company's services
It was going on "peacefully" before I came back to my native place. Their Skype worked albeit with a "broken connection" at times and the rented BSNL's Wifi modem just about servicing their needs.
IMHO the modems you guys get given are awful. In Europe I've had
Motorola,
Nokia Siemens,
ZyXEL,
Linksys and Alcatel but in India you get... shit. Modems that even the Chinese themselves won't buy.
Half the problem here is the obligation for 30% or so of telecommunications equipment purchases to have to go to an Indian company. Problem is, the equipment is often so awful, it causes more problems than it's worth. I'm not personally 100% clear on how it has to work, but if that applies to us as well, then we'll probably end up buying our quota then throwing it in the trash or donating it to some poor company like BSNL because I don't want to have to deal with it.
What is the way out then for "unlimited services" then? Perhaps make the existing system more efficient? Maybe getting together as customers on a common platform to demand "better services"? What is the definition of "better services"- 99.9% uptimes ALL the times? Never a lag?
Broadband will only be as good as the infrastructure, irrespective of the plan type.
The real challenge is how can a provider realistically provide an "unlimited" plan, whilst keeping the prices down? Considering the costs of bandwidth and infrastructure, it's not easy.
I think this is a large portion of the reason that speeds in India are still so slow: it's only "reasonably possible" to provide 256k service with no data cap Rs750 a month because any more than that and there simply isn't going to be enough resource to go around, that is, international bandwidth. And forget NIXI - until the charges on that stop being so obscene, lack of peering with other providers will continue to force a lot of traffic offshore (even if it comes back to India), which really compounds the problem of resource availability.
It's hard to come over such an issue but then we all know the cure of this malady- efficient broadband is the answer. But we don't know how to treat this malady...
Customers need to really help ISPs figure out a way to work together - and my first step would be banding together to tell the government that NIXI's per-GB charges are unacceptable and ****ing up the state of Indian Broadband in a big way, and secondly that the local loop should become unbundled so that providers who choose to lease copper can provide unanimous service nationwide.
And for the telco babus? **** em. I can assure you that the likes of the TRAI, MTNL, BSNL,
DoT all need some fresh blood - they're all currently being run by 60 and 70 year olds whose thinking is clearly outdated and this needs to change.
). SO from next year i hope 2mbps @ 599/month 
