TheIndian
Forerunner
Broadband is dead in our country
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Spacescreamer
Innovator
In words of Greg Chappell.. the poms are to be blamed (and i think there is some truth in that story..)
TheIndian
Forerunner
raksrules
Oracle
True that in some cases. Have stayed in China. Used to pay around 1500 Rs (don't exactly remember) for 2 Mbps unlimited connection. But the catch, since it was the great China
Great firewall of China would block youtube, facebook, mediafire and many such sites.
Searching for some suspicious terms (i did not even know they were suspicious) would disconnect my internet and make it inaccessible for few minutes.
Had to resort to free VPNs to bypass the firewall but speeds got reduced.
Torrent traffic was shaped, i felt, even for 2 Mbps i would get low torrent speeds. Had to get a seedbox to supplement.
Spacescreamer
Innovator
You actually cant count china's set up in the current discussion. They are a bit warped.
Introducing another thing in here.. How come Singapore scores so many points over India ?
(i know the basic few reasons.. but would like to hear more on this..)
Introducing another thing in here.. How come Singapore scores so many points over India ?
(i know the basic few reasons.. but would like to hear more on this..)
Very interesting discussion here (with some flak thown in here & there for good measure).
I have been using the net for over 25 years (started off with 12kbps..... hotmail used to take ages to open up; dumped it and then stayed with 64kbps/unlimitted for many years. Paying a princely sum of Rs900/- in those days).
Today I am on Pacenet Broadband 2/4MBps day/night/unlimitted and pay Rs2500/- for 90 days.
My nephew in Waterloo, Canada uses a 55MBps LTE :annoyed:
I AM TIRED & PISSED OFF WAITING FOR 25 years for a decent bandwith (8-10MBps) which will not pinch my pocket & with no FUP. There are so many countries around the world who make such services mandatory..... and to all those trollers who are asking for proof out here, YOU ARE LIVING IN THE STONE AGES.
mgcarley has given the most detailed perspective of the state of affairs in India (I presume he is an insider/service provider) of "Why it Is, What it Is....." which still leaves me frustrated.
Is the Government AFRAID that a nation of 1.1 Billion plus will go berserk when given minimum speeds of 25MBps!
Why don't they reduce the insane licensing fees & other charges & taxes on "Broadband" - that will benefit all (service providers/end users).
Our nations progress and growth will leapfrog once we offer such speeds to all - in every town & village.
I can go on and on ad infinitum listing the phenomenal benefits that we as a nation stand to gain - each and every sector; village school; farmer; real-time teaching/video-conferencing in schools & colleges..... solving the problem of 'shortage of qualified teachers'; work from home folks (creating 1000's of new jobs); less crowd on trains & roads as many could work/study from home (advantages to those who are physically challenged)......... watch quality stuff in 1080p, without buffering (not just porn you morons out here); justice can be speeded up a 1000 fold in clearing the backlog of millions of pending cases..... where virtual courtrooms are created.....
and lastly ShawnZer you are talking (and thinking) ***Dung if you feel that the net is used only for the purpose that you mention.
I have been using the net for over 25 years (started off with 12kbps..... hotmail used to take ages to open up; dumped it and then stayed with 64kbps/unlimitted for many years. Paying a princely sum of Rs900/- in those days).
Today I am on Pacenet Broadband 2/4MBps day/night/unlimitted and pay Rs2500/- for 90 days.
My nephew in Waterloo, Canada uses a 55MBps LTE :annoyed:
I AM TIRED & PISSED OFF WAITING FOR 25 years for a decent bandwith (8-10MBps) which will not pinch my pocket & with no FUP. There are so many countries around the world who make such services mandatory..... and to all those trollers who are asking for proof out here, YOU ARE LIVING IN THE STONE AGES.
mgcarley has given the most detailed perspective of the state of affairs in India (I presume he is an insider/service provider) of "Why it Is, What it Is....." which still leaves me frustrated.
Is the Government AFRAID that a nation of 1.1 Billion plus will go berserk when given minimum speeds of 25MBps!
Why don't they reduce the insane licensing fees & other charges & taxes on "Broadband" - that will benefit all (service providers/end users).
Our nations progress and growth will leapfrog once we offer such speeds to all - in every town & village.
I can go on and on ad infinitum listing the phenomenal benefits that we as a nation stand to gain - each and every sector; village school; farmer; real-time teaching/video-conferencing in schools & colleges..... solving the problem of 'shortage of qualified teachers'; work from home folks (creating 1000's of new jobs); less crowd on trains & roads as many could work/study from home (advantages to those who are physically challenged)......... watch quality stuff in 1080p, without buffering (not just porn you morons out here); justice can be speeded up a 1000 fold in clearing the backlog of millions of pending cases..... where virtual courtrooms are created.....
and lastly ShawnZer you are talking (and thinking) ***Dung if you feel that the net is used only for the purpose that you mention.
TheIndian
Forerunner
Someone did compare the blazing internet speed in China with India, most seem to be just whining for the sake of whining without any real foundation or even examples of what they would like to see in India.
About Singapore, could you elaborate, and add a few points of your own?
- - - Updated - - -
Interesting post, informative, accurate and inaccurate both in parts.
Leased / fixed line Internet came into being about 18 years ago, prior to that it was dial up only (Which was EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE due to the per 3 min metering). a 64k leased/fixed line back then cost not 900, but >5,000 a month upto even 10,000, ( I know because I ran an ISP and charged people for it and there was a waiting list).
Love that your nephew has 55MBps, I do not know much about LTE tech, and will not comment much on it. but I suspect it would be a lot like our 3MBps EVDO services, I wonder who if anyone ever got 3MBps and how long did it sustain for. It should also be pointed out, North America is not the real example as they do not connect out anywhere, where as the rest of the world plugs into them. Well this is changing, but fact is we still connect into them.
We do have 8-10MBps, but not at less than Rs 1000 a month, we would just have to pay a little more for it, and you should pull those trollers out of the stone ages and smack them in the face with links of 8-10Mbps from around the world at competitive prices.
We Indians love blaming the Govt for everything that is wrong. Is there a cap from the govt for a max speed ? Have you even tried getting a net service into your home from a Licensed service provider, I wonder why none of the big private names every show up here, Maybe they just do not want to service you, and the only one really serving you is trusty old BSNL and MTNL who will give you a connection anywhere and everywhere. If you observe, its the Govt cos who are at the forefront of cutting net prices and advertising for them. The private companies have to be beaten with a stick to service the individuals. And what Insane fees are you talking about ??? For Net services I remember it was a puny 2 Cr (or 20, hardly matters) Cr for a national licence.
And Before you belittle porn, be aware Porn has been at the cutting edge of introduction of all Video Technology. Like it or not, its evil that drives technology in every part of life.
The general benefits of access to information is known to all, the problem before us is implementing this, the road map for it. I suppose all specific suggestions would be welcome.
And one does not need 1080 definition or bleeding edge technology to impart education./ knowledge, it can be managed with things that are proven and last forever. Infrastructure building is a lot different from a home.
Now have to get back to work - More laters.
raksrules
Oracle
Thanks for the correction - I had a dial up line at first.
Who else do we blame if there is no rationalisation of bandwidth & pricing ?
Agreed, both MTNL & BSNL are easily available & have cutting edge technologies (they are the only ones who are ipv6 ready + other protocols) ?
Regards Charges - I am paying pacenet just 2.5k (with taxes) for 3 months for 2/4MBps day/night unlimitted. With MTNL-Mumbai I would be paying 4999/- for just 2/2Mbps per month (without taxes) & Rs 9999/- for 4MBps per month. IF THIS IS NOT INSANE THEN PRAY TELL ME WHAT IS
Unlimited Plans |
Check out MTNL rates for Delhi - a whole lot cheaper than Mumbai & BSNL - the lowest of all. Why such a huge differential in pricing ? Is'nt the Govt milching Mumbai dry (how many subscribers do they still have in Mumbai)?
Agreed mate ...evil rakes in all the moolah :yahoo:
mgcarley
Contributor
...to whom are you referring?
Disagree. India is trying to push improvements for it's tech infrastructure in a big way. Unfortunately, they're not allowing foreign companies (Alcatel, Motorola, Cisco, Juniper, Zhone, Ciena, Huawei, ZTE et al ad infinitum) to do it, instead pushing for only Indian telecom vendors to do the build. Now, some may get pissed off at this part but lets face facts here: the quality isn't really that good. Most of the equipment I've seen doesn't even measure up to the Chinese vendors. At least when the Chinese vendors copy technology, they copy properly. Indian stuff is like... it's like someone drew the schematics on a napkin and faxed it through.
Shanghai doesn't really reflect China (and neither does Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan - all territories China claims as it's own these days). Yes, you can get decent enough speeds in Shanghai but good luck anywhere else in the country.
...this I can agree on.
??????e9-?????????·?? - 20mbit/s unlimited 199 Yuan/month (a little over Rs1700). Choose the second tab underneath the graphic.
While censorship is rife in China, the blocks are "easily bypassed" according to most people. That's not to say that India is significantly better in this respect - as far as Internet freedom is concerned, India's heading for "enemy of the Internet" status.
Both of the above posts thus proving my points about speed
Bangalore and Hyderabad have pretty much the best speeds in India for widely available networks. I'm working in Mumbai but coverage isn't significant enough yet as compared to ACT and Beam respectively. Airtel has got 8/16/30/50 mbit/s plans on ADSL and VDSL but anything above 4 mbit/s has *extremely* limited coverage.
...the only ISP options in the UAE are government owned (Du and Etisalat might as well be the same company - it's like BSNL and MTNL except that in UAE no competition is allowed).
You should feel lucky to be here. Decent speeds. No active law for copyright infringment. Good service (not a joke, we have way too many people). Atleast I have been happy on airtel, if not for their FUP but they are currently the best (sigh!)
Decent speeds compared to who exactly... Africa? India is in the bottom 25th percentile in the world when it comes to speeds, even behind Pakistan (by quite a significant margin, might I add, and this is as measured by servers outside of each respective country, not Ookla where the server you're hitting is usually pretty local).
Copyright... there's a lot you don't hear about. Hollywood yes, copyright can be more or less safely ignored. Bollywood... not as much.
Ooh, ooh... how many countries do I need to have used the Internet in to be an expert? 3? 5? 30? As I write, I'm in Tbilisi on a pretty decent connection, I'll be in the Germany on Sunday, the US (this time in Michigan both in Detroit and some other smaller cities) next week, central America later this month and in Florida I think in March, north (Egypt at least) and central Africa (Uganda at least) sometime in the next 3 months and France maybe in April... so I'll report back on what I find probably on Twitter as I pass through each place. Outside of that, I can give you experience from most of Asia-Pacific, most of Europe (both Western and Eastern), some of the US, the Caucasus and parts of the Middle-East.
And here's something I've observed after visiting a lot of places and using their Internets: the US is a shithole when it comes to Internet. It really is, and I frankly don't understand why India uses it as a benchmark for how "good" it is because, it's a pretty low bar, all things considered. #12 in the OECD isn't much to aspire to.
I had a *real* hard time getting decent in Chicago just last month (and I'm talking downtown, not even in the outskirts) - I had AT&T 3G, Verizon LTE and finally I managed to get a Comcast connection but it did go down for about 2 hours in the early hours of the morning - not every morning, but often enough for me to feel it. Basically, unless you're lucky enough to live in the right place and can get one of the... 4 ISPs that are any "good" (Verizon Fios, Cablevision, Comcast and I think Sonic.net or something - and I discount Google for the time being because they're not *yet* a large provider), you're more or less screwed for decent Internet in the US and it's at a pretty similar level to what you get in India.
For one, Singapore has a well built, well maintained, open access network that any provider can use, doesn't have a large coverage area, is a very large hub carrying a *lot* of traffic between the US and Asia, has more bandwidth to the outside world than India and intense competition (something like 5 providers on the island). What other reasons do you want?
Advertised speed != actual speed. Does he actually get over 5 megabytes per second on a download?
Not entirely accurate - in most countries, providers aren't racing to the bottom to see who can provide the minimum service for the cheapest price. There are only a few countries where certain service levels are mandated by law, otherwise, in countries like mine (NZ) and Australia, the provider will happily reduce you to 64k after you hit your FUP. It happens in the US but the policy depends on the provider - some will just charge you $10 extra for another 50GB of traffic or something while others might shape your traffic...
Thanks, but I can assure you, at the same time, I am trying to do something about it as well. We have support from people wanting such services in India but... not from many other places, I'm afraid - my previous post mentioned something about wireless vs landlines and how since we're pushing a landline service we're not exactly a favourite for VIPs (you can't pass *MY* driveway with that cable!!), government or most investors.
But here's what I don't get: wireless. They're happy to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for spectrum to deliver the service to a large numbers of customers. Now. How much would it cost to cable up each circle with a shiny new fibre network? Better still if said network is open-access for any licensed provider to use? At the end of the day the price difference between laying a pile of fibre and buying spectrum isn't that much different BUT consumers get a far inferior experience because wireless isn't a good delivery medium, especially when it's crowded. You can push only so many megabits through each wireless node but you can push hundreds of gigabits through fibre. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Government no. Providers yes. The government isn't afraid of speed, it's afraid of large-scale access to information.
Even if they don't reduce the license fees, perhaps those of us paying the fees should get a say in how it's spent (by which I mean not consumers, the ISPs themselves - the reason I say that is because if consumers had a say they'd all want everything for themselves. As would the ISPs. But it's easier to manage 140 votes than 14 million). The license as it is now MOSTLY goes to subsidizing BSNL.
That's what I'm hoping for, too.
Little quip: it's generally accepted that MBps = MegaBytes per second whereas the term used for measuring speeds as advertised by providers is Mbps or Megabits per second. I personally prefer mbit/s and mbyte/s for easy distinction, but that's just me.
Otherwise yes, it would be nice to have everything available to everyone. But India isn't socialist enough.
I believe he was asking a question.
Waiting list, eh? Sounds familiar.
Except that he said Canada, which in itself has a strange situation as compared to the USA.
Easy. Google UPC (or Liberty Cable - same company, UPC is the brand). Go to any one of their country sites (they're available in most of Western Europe except France, IIRC, and they just brought out Virgin Media UK). See the cheap Internets!
Government and ISPs both, IMO. Government for bad policy, and subsidizing government ISPs who give out cheap broadband (because they'll just get a topup from the government whereas the private players are not afforded such a luxury), and other ISPs for pandering to consumers wanting 2mbit/s unlimited broadband for Rs499/month or whatever because MTNL etc can deliver it at that price (forget about the fact that they lose hundreds of crores a year) - and consumers coming to expect such prices even though the economics of it don't make it feasible...
BSNL/MTNL are required to by the government. If they had a choice, there are a lot of places they wouldn't service.
See above re: the rates and advertising and stuff. Private companies are less willing to lose a billion dollars a year on what *should* be a profitable business.
Also, the govt telcos got a 2 year head-start on 3G services. How well did that work out for them?
2Cr (about 2.5 once all the extras are taken in to account) but you're missing the quarterly percentage taken by the government.
...no dispute there. They do have that reputation. Pity that such content is considered "immoral content" in India and is supposed to be blocked.
See above. Do you really think the government wants general access to information?
Perhaps, but, how happy would you be if random things stopped working in your home? You all of a sudden got there and the lock just went "eh. I'm not going to work"... then 12 hours later it started working again. Or something equally silly. The point? Reliability should be a requirement, too.
@mgcarley - I wanted your opinion on the internet conditions in the UK and neighbouring countries. My friend in London is paying £20 (~Rs 1700) per month for an upto 20 mbps connection, no FUP. And there are no copyright restrictions and the service seems to be pretty good. According to him, TV channels are really expensive so they have gotten a deal for £35 per month package for TV + broadband.
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mgcarley
Contributor
Sounds like your friend is on Virgin Media (which as mentioned, has just been sold to a big multinational conglomerate of ISPs).
Most of Europe is excellent. The UK is probably one of the worst countries on the continent, in part because of BT, but now BT is doing a big push to get fibre closer to the users (finally) although there are some reasonably significant populated areas which are being overlooked, so some of those areas are taking matters in to their own hands. Ireland used to be quite dire but nowadays not so bad in urban areas at least.
France has long been the land of "30 euros a month for triple play unlimited everything" - even in 2006 when I was living there. First it was 12mbit/s ADSL2, then 24mbit/s ADSL2+, then FTTH 50mbit/s now 100mbit/s, including phone and TV service. Other countries differ of course with their offerings so you'd have to tell me which particular countries you want to know about.
My opinion about what the UK has as an advantage is it's location. LINX is one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world - even all the big Indian operators are connected to LINX. It's also very close in proximity to Amsterdam (AMSIX) and Paris (various including Equinix) and it's not too far from Frankfurt (DE-CIX Frankfurt). Transit is very very cheap (even to the USA), and given that there are a lot of big data centres on the continent, a lot of content is generated and/or hosted at very close range, so with this combination it's easy to do high speeds at low prices - for a 10G interconnect at any of these facilities you're looking at less than 1 lakh per month (40-60k isn't unheard of), no traffic charges, just straight up peering.
On the other hand, India is, geographically, in a pretty horrible part of the world because none of it's neighbours are really too big on Internet stuff and/or are in a similar situation to India itself (unlike Europe) and/or are not 100% friendly with India - which makes things difficult. To make things more interesting, what little peering does go on in India involves traffic being metered and charged for, so most ISPs peer outside India (usually Singapore) which means sending all the traffic to Singapore and back which isn't a cheap or efficient proposition even if we could get the lines for like Rs50/mbit (which we can't yet), and in addition, Singapore isn't really very close. This combination doesn't bode well for the user experience.
Whoaaaa @mgcarley ... THANKS so very much for putting across all these things so succintly - this is more than just a primer on broadband. I am sure that all of us on TE have gained so much (especially yours truly).
Mucho Gracias ..... and keep it going
and NOW, Where Do We Go from Here ????
Cheers
Terry
Mucho Gracias ..... and keep it going
and NOW, Where Do We Go from Here ????
Cheers
Terry
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mgcarley
Contributor
Well... there are a lot of things that need to be done, of course. There's the people with vision & the people with money - pairing those two up would be an important step.
There's the existing leadership which may require either a little changing or some arm-twisting to get things done - whether that's forcing cable ops to join together in to one large network (and stop all this petty egotistical and territorial nonsense and sabotaging each other's networks) so as to avoid the segmentation problem in the last mile, or whether that's someone putting a foot in the head of NIXI's arse regarding the pricing structure.
There's a user mentality change, too - I'm hold the opinion that if services were better and not portrayed as being so scarce (artificial scarcity seems to play at least some role here) then users wouldn't rape the service downloading everything they possibly can - as some of the users with higher speed connections have already pointed out.
There are probably a bunch of other things too but those are the ones glaring in my head at this moment. In some areas, the infrastructure is there, it's just run by people who are either incompetent or don't care (so long as you keep paying). I think if the government mandated that service providers are obligated to achieve the maximum out of their infrastructure rather than prescribing minimums, we might see a shift in service quality and speeds. But who knows.
I'm quite happy to lead by example with what resources I have.
aBs0lut3z33r0
Contributor
sorry for bump
Our nations progress and growth will leapfrog once we offer such speeds to all - in every town & village.as if that will ever happen
I can go on and on ad infinitum listing the phenomenal benefits that we as a nation stand to gain - each and every sector; village school; farmer; real-time teaching/video-conferencing in schools & colleges.....Also, so called "students" will be busy downloading movies and pr0ns from the college's Wi-Fi network after obtaining the SSID and password, not just do vide0-conferencing like acche bacche the solving the problem of 'shortage of qualified teachers'; work from home folks (creating 1000's of new jobs); less crowd on trains & roads as many could work/study from home (advantages to those who are physically challenged)......... What is the proportion of people who will use the net for such good causes to the people who will just "Download" their way to glory?with all the latest games and movies just a click away?watch quality stuff in 1080p, without buffering (not just porn youmoronsMajority[sadly] out here)How much "quality stuff in 1080p" is available on youtube? who watches streamed FHD stuff here anyway
and lastly ShawnZer you are talking (and thinking) ***Dung if you feel that the net is used only for the purpose that you mention.
challapradyumna
Discoverer
OT - I've read in a book that there are products using WDM( Wavelength Division Multiplexing ) that can transmit 96 channels of 10Gbps each making a total of 960Gbps per fibre . Is this technology used anywhere or is it just textbook stuff?
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