Why can't we get better internet with fast speeds and large data caps?

[mgcarley]

For all those who are thinking startups like Hayai would solve this problem, you are bit wrong. Because they existing providers have monopoly and they won't easily allow a new player into the market. Plus there is a issue any new provider has to dig roads & lay cables or use cable operators's help. both options are turn out to be expensive & cumbersome as you have obtain permits,deal with local societies & lots of red tape.

However, situation will ONLY improve with unbundling of local loop , it will allow any new player to provide services by using existing infrastructure to reach subscribers without major capex

My Dream for India is internet connectivity being cheapest,fastest and within common's reach.

It looks like you've been reading my posts about LLU and everything else, but the only problem is that the infrastructure would need some serious tidying up for that to happen - it would probably be cheaper and more effective for the government to start from scratch.

 

[mgcarley]

what a stupid recommendation. more money to eat for govt babus now. main problem we have here is that the govt always thinks of making money out of everything. they need to fuel their exponential salaries and defence expenditures and need scapegoats here and there. what's the necessity of the central and state govt requiring to spend 20K crore on optic fibres? they could have opened up bsnl's existig optic fibre network or just made a plan so that any isp could upgrade bsnl's lines from copper to optic fibre and still give revenue for sharing the lines. or they could just allow the private isp's to put up their wires on a shared network of poles around the country at their cost. now they will have an unnecessary network on their hands which i doubt anyone could utilise fully due to bad quality of fibres etc.

on top of that the loans. hell. the govt might even ask people to start paying for the loans in one way or the other through some tax.

You're forgetting about the other government fiber networks, including Railtel and Gailtel.

It could work - in theory - if all of these government fiber optic networks were consolidated and cleaned up, and only ONE company was put in charge of wholesaling the capacity to providers - right to the end user. Then we'd have the unbundled network we need to be able to provide services nationwide and without "feasibility studies" like providers in my country can do.

 

[mgcarley]

i think users can get more options if they start to build community hubs in densely populated areas.
so overall downloading will reduce and people will swirch to pay as you use plans .
this will put some serious dent in the ISP profits and in the cash crunch they will provide better services.
just a suggestion

If by "community hubs" you mean like a LAN, there's going to need to be some regulatory and legal changes first - under most of the acts relating to telecommunications in India, if you operate a network without a license, you're in trouble (well, in theory... guess it depends how zealous the local law enforcers are).

Of course, if you want to do the whole thing on flash drives and DVDs, that's fine, but as I recall, there used to be a DVD-wala coming to my mother in law's society a couple of times a week, so it's already in place in some areas

 

[mgcarley]

Yes even romania has better average speeds in their country and have watched a piece on bbc some years ago where in it was stated that romania is one of the broke countries among the european countries.
And further they wanted the condition of people there to improve thus the EU started to act more stringent on immigration out of EU.

Actually Constanta, Romania has overtaken Umea, Sweden as the fastest city in Europe. Having been to Romania, I can tell you that some of it's infrastructure is surprisingly modern, however the rest of it... not so much.

 

[mgcarley]

From todays Hindu: Bahrain's King has ordered that each family in the monarchy be given $3000 to mark the anniversary of national charter of reforms as cyber activists called for protests in Bahrain starting from Monday to demand social, political and economic reforms.

Maybe something like this can be done to make the govt change the present state of broadband.

I thought it was Kuwait. Or maybe Bahrain is doing now also?

 

[mgcarley]

I've just tried to post several replies here but they have not worked? Damn.

 

[Gaurish]

I was wondering,

isn't internet supposed to get cheaper and faster over time? Currently' prices are only increasing. I don't understand:|

It looks like you've been reading my posts about LLU and everything else, but the only problem is that the infrastructure would need some serious tidying up for that to happen - it would probably be cheaper and more effective for the government to start from scratch.

Yes, I have and also comparing the situation to other places like Finland where LLU has been implemented. I am pretty impressed by positive results to a extent I do think at atleast for DSL - the present cooper cables are in good shape.

what you are saying might be true for fibre.

 

[mgcarley]

I was wondering,

isn't internet supposed to get cheaper and faster over time? Currently' prices are only increasing. I don't understand:|

I agree. As I'm currently sitting outside India waiting to come back to my adoptive home, I get to sit here saying "WTF" about the broadband situation. Especially since even I've managed to get wholesale pricing sufficiently low to know that, especially the big 3, SEEM to be ripping customers off in a big way.

They may have overheads I don't know about (maybe the cost of broadband is subsidizing losses on the mobile divisions, who knows), but when they're there paying what equates to well under Rs10/GB, then charging you Rs899 for an 8GB FUP cap (picking on Airtel in this case), that makes for one hell of a subsidy.

Yes, I have and also comparing the situation to other places like Finland where LLU has been implemented. I am pretty impressed by positive results to a extent I do think at atleast for DSL - the present cooper cables are in good shape.

In Finland? Yes. In India? Hmmmmmmmmmm... not as much.

NZ is in the process of LLU right now, and for speeds within NZ, it's working pretty well. There is still a huge bottleneck on the International side.

In India, if the DSL exchanges can be cabinetized (bringing the DSLAMs closer to the consumers, meanwhile upgrading the equipment to support ADSL2+ or even VDSL), then short copper lengths might make up for the birds nests that the providers call a network and allow faster line speeds.

I've often said that providers would be better off adopting the model we have here in NZ and charging something like Rs10-20 per GB on top of a nominal line fee and just having the speed be limited only by the copper itself. The tariff structures as they are now are unnecessarily confusing (20GB @ 2mbit/s, 20GB @ 4mbit/s being different prices? WHY!?! Cost is more or less the same!)

Couple this with LLU and life would be so much easier for both consumers and providers. Providers don't have to have a network each, providers don't have to worry about feasibility or territories, everyone can just provide similar service to everyone else, which means consumers get choice and proper competition because everyone would be forced to compete based on pricing and quality service and customer care, rather than what's available at their particular address - and consumers could switch easily if a provider didn't suit them.

2 years ago, I'd have loved to get Airtel but alas, it wasn't available at my place - I had a choice of Tata or the local cablewala, and I didn't really want either.

Oh, and peering needs to be done properly (instead of Rs25/GB, it should just be a flat fee as it is everywhere else in the world).

what you are saying might be true for fibre.

...Obviously, as there isn't much FTTH infrastructure to start from. Backbone, yes. Regional, yes. Point to point, yes. Last mile, no.

 

[RS4]

I've just tried to post several replies here but they have not worked? Damn.

All your posts are visible, i think you are under moderation now( first few posts of all the members are moderated).

 

[panther]

We should do something like happened in eypt... what say guys ...

 

[mgcarley]

All your posts are visible, i think you are under moderation now( first few posts of all the members are moderated).

Was. But geez, took long enough to moderate the posts. I wrote those days ago.

We should do something like happened in eypt... what say guys ...

To what end? Gotta have a purpose, you see, otherwise the crowd's chant would be something like:

1. What do we want?

2. Something!

1. When do we want it?

2. Some time in the not too distant future, if it's not too inconvenient!



Besides, at whom would your protest be directed?

 

[RS4]

I agree. As I'm currently sitting outside India waiting to come back to my adoptive home, I get to sit here saying "WTF" about the broadband situation. Especially since even I've managed to get wholesale pricing sufficiently low to know that, especially the big 3, SEEM to be ripping customers off in a big way.

They may have overheads I don't know about (maybe the cost of broadband is subsidizing losses on the mobile divisions, who knows), but when they're there paying what equates to well under Rs10/GB, then charging you Rs899 for an 8GB FUP cap (picking on Airtel in this case), that makes for one hell of a subsidy.

Well buying Africa takes a lot of money

 

[mgcarley]

Well buying Africa takes a lot of money

That applies to Airtel, but no-one else, really. I mean, I can't justify Rs500/GB (MTNL, BSNL and others). Rs50, maybe (and even that is extreme), but 500? No.
Solution: Don't buy Africa. Or at least make the African consumers pay for it, for crying out loud, they're availing services in their own respective countries, after all, not borrowing services from India.

 

[RS4]

That applies to Airtel, but no-one else, really. I mean, I can't justify Rs500/GB (MTNL, BSNL and others). Rs50, maybe (and even that is extreme), but 500? No.
Solution: Don't buy Africa. Or at least make the African consumers pay for it, for crying out loud, they're availing services in their own respective countries, after all, not borrowing services from India.

Recently BSNL has reduced it to rs 200/GB :rofl:

Airtel/bharti doesnt care about us, they have enough demand and they are winning awards at international stage(MWC 2011) for their work in africa(india is just a cash cow for airtel):

http://www.globalmobileawards.com/awards/winners_2011.htm

 

[mgcarley]

Recently BSNL has reduced it to rs 200/GB :rofl:

Airtel/bharti doesnt care about us, they have enough demand and they are winning awards at international stage(MWC 2011) for their work in africa:

http://www.globalmobileawards.com/awards/winners_2011.htm

Yeah I saw that, but 20p/MB = Rs204.8 (round that to 205) which is still ~Rs200 more than they pay for it

...not to mention that for them 1GB of usage is inclusive of both download and upload (we count download and upload separately).

 

[RS4]

Yeah I saw that, but 20p/MB = Rs204.8 (round that to 205) which is still ~Rs200 more than they pay for it

...not to mention that for them 1GB of usage is inclusive of both download and upload (we count download and upload separately).

yeah, every isp(airtel,bsnl,mtnl,hathway,reliance etc etc..) counts it as data transfer which is downloaded+uploaded data, that is another reason we are waiting impatiently for your Hayai broadband services, BTW where is bangalore in your launch startegy? i mean when can we expect Hayai in bangalore after the mumbai launch.

 

[mgcarley]

yeah, every isp(airtel,bsnl,mtnl,hathway,reliance etc etc..) counts it as data transfer which is downloaded+uploaded data, that is another reason we are waiting impatiently for your Hayai broadband services, BTW where is bangalore in your launch startegy? i mean when can we expect Hayai in bangalore after the mumbai launch.

Infrastructure is going in in Mumbai (as it has been for some time), and more recently Pune and NCR (fortunately building infrastructure doesn't require the same kind of licensing as actually operating the service).

Other cities will be after Mumbai subject to quite a number of conditions. Planning a city only takes about a week - by the end of which we would have a relatively clearcut map of where the service will be available and when, what the competition is like in any given area and a rough idea of challenges. Putting physical infrastructure is hard to guess because that's subject to things that happen on the ground at the time, but before that even happens, Governmental stuff can also cause a delay.

Of course, other than infrastructure and local government permissions, there are things to take in to account. Supply of CPEs and actual ability to provide a service. Money and investments count too (it's not exactly a cheap thing to build). Exponential growth is great, but if it's not manageable, that's a recipe for disaster.

There's also some other things to take in to account: demand. Yes, it's high in Kolkata and Bangalore and Chennai and Hyderabad and so on, but there are plenty of smaller cities which are desperately underserved, so in some cases they may even get the service before parts of the main metros, but basically, as we grow, we should be able to spread at a much faster rate.

I think in ideal circumstances, 12 months is a reasonable timeframe to at least be in the major metros, and a few smaller ones: not necessarily blanketing the cities but having some presence there from which we can expand in those places, even if only with the Hayai Lite service (from which we can work out where fiber needs to go).

 

[RS4]

^^Ok, so its 12 months for major metros+ few smaller cities

 

[mgcarley]

^^Ok, so its 12 months for major metros+ few smaller cities

To have significant coverage in those cities, maybe less for a pilot - it's very difficult to say.

 

[6pack]

i just got online after BSNL in my area kept me away from internet for past 7 days continuously. It was already down from Jan 30 to Feb 4th previously.

They do this every month and i don't have internet connectivity for around 10-12 days in a month. That's around 33% of downtime and many people in my area are at their wits end.

@mgcarley, sending an open invitation to you to start services of Hayai in my small city - nallasopara. I'm sure the existing customers of BSNL will jump ship if you can give us rates comparable to BSNL.

The only other players here are providing wireless internet at blazing speeds of 144kbps! Tata photon, Airtel, Reliance all advertise upto 2Mbps for around 700-800 a month but in reality all you get is just 144kbps.

I'd switch if its around 1k max a month and speed is ~1Mbps. I don't even want 5 or 8 Mbps. Just a working connection that wont stop is required.