User A: Requires min. downloading but good speeds

User B: Require heavy downloading, speed does not matter much.

So ISP’s must seggregate users in the above format and charge accordingly.

if User A browse internet without too much downloading, he should go for limited plans with high speed. (Ex. BSNL 1 GB for Rs. 250, speed upto 2 MBPS)

If user B, needs unlimited downloading, let him have it (Ex. BSNL U/L Home for Rs. 750, max. speed 256 kbps)

In second case, there should not be a need for FUP as you are already giving him lower speeds and he is well aware of that!

FUP in my opinion is one sided and favours those who do limited downloading which allows these mean ISPs to have more no. of users with limited resources.

The focus must be on increasing resources. Allow foreign players if possible and improve India’s 115th ranking.

I always respected TATA for their over-all quality of products and service’s offered are such. If so I would request you to kindly include this statement prominently in all services offered by TATA, OTHERWISE under present law of land is clearly clarified by the judiciary clauses.

S. Chatterjee

Seriously, your hate is misdirected. Don’t hate other people for using a resource they are paying for in full. Hate your ISP for making false promises to you, and not delivering to you what you are paying for.

Dont you think that sticking to contention ratio will improve (hopefully) the experience.

If you are committing to provide 10 users with 256kbps unlimited internet, then you better have a bandwidth of 10 x 256 = 2560kbps. Otherwise, you are committing a fraud upon your customers, and not providing them with the service you legally bound yourself to give them.

Seriously, if Airtel / Tata / Reliance are honestly having issues of scarcity of bandwidth (I seriously doubt that), then they should just discontinue unlimited plans.

The tragedy isn’t of the commons – it’s of our technological future.

How do you explain the current slow connection that I pay for (in the name of unlimited plan?)??

I really fail to understand why so much of hue/cry – when I know that I am currrently overpaying for the current speed (that I get, which is not even near 128 Kbps) and with the new regulation, things hopefully will improve.

it becomes unlimited for you.

And it still won’t be unlimited for me because of the data transfer speed cap. So there is a known limit that comes with every unlimited plan.

Also, the moment I and 100 others buy an “unlimited” plan, we pay substantially higher prices than regular prices, so the ISP can acquire more resources to meet the demand. Can’t it?

Here is how tragedy of commons is applicable (let me explain on ashish’s behalf) –
The moment you and 100 others buy unlimited plan, you are ready to exploit the resource. it becomes unlimited for you.
If one guy starts downloading movies/torrents, doesnt hurt others. 10 guys do it and the resource is exploited and becomes not-so-useful for others who don’t exploit it.

“This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals or groups, each of whom is motivated to maximize use of the resource to the point in which they become reliant on it, while the costs of the exploitation are borne by all those to whom the resource is available (which may be a wider class of individuals than those who are exploiting it).”

- Clear or still want to reach out to your text-book?

But I’ll humour you – pray tell me, what are these “practical aspects” related to the tragedy of the commons that’s applicable here?

The limits defined for TATA look quite fair to me; and I agree with you on Sify’s unlimited connection being rather slow. Specially at 10 PM it takes a huge dip and stars crawling, I wonder if that’s the reason they have a special plan thats 50% costiler but promises to double your speed in night.

In India you pay approximately same for a 256Kbps (so called) unlimited connection to what US/Europe pays for 4Mbps connection. And They call India is much cheaper in all respect.

Why to impose a limitation when customer has to sacrifice the speed for allowed download. You can get him a 2Mbps connection with 150MB limit for Rs 125 but still he shells out 1000 Rs for 256 Kbps so that he don’t have to worry about running over the usage limit. Wait, and you will soon see a new costlier unlimited Plan for 256 Kbps with no limitation whatsoever.

That would mean no unlimited plans – all plans come with download caps (since it’s not possible to really put a price on “unlimited” usage); and SLAs that force refunds or other penalties for ISPs if up/down speeds are less than promised for a specified amount of time (so that ISPs are forced to model usage of their network appropriately). The most important thing, though, is no retroactive provisions. If you have a plan, both you and the ISP will abide by those conditions for its duration. When the contract is up for renewal, any conditions are fair game.

Of course, this assume a competitive ISP market, which may not always be the case. Even if the customer has a few different providers (who are not acting as a cartel, and it’s TRAI’s job to ensure that they don’t), though, these rules should work.

The ISPs are screwing us because they can get away with it in an imperfect and distorted marketplace with a lot of in-efficiencies and price discrimination built into it thanks to an incompetent regulator. A regulator which hasn’t been able to seed a price competitive marketplace for ISPs in all these years.

“Why everybody wants to think of the power userbase? How about first serving the ‘normal’/average userbase?”
Because without power users there would be no content to serve the ‘normal’/average userbase. Internet is what people do on Internet. If there were only average/normal users trying to check their e-mail on Internet once a week then Internet would be hardly the useful driver of economic of growth it is today in the US and other developed countries.

I am not saying everything will be screwed up – but I do agree with the fact that ppl who are paying for unlimited should get a ‘decent’ connectivity ( I am on BSNL..and its slow for my unlimited plan).

Why everybody wants to think of the power userbase? How about first serving the ‘normal’/average userbase?

Ashish, your comment area doesn’t seem to have a different color for URLs.

First they came for torrent users
I remained silent;
I was not a torrenter.

When they locked up the video users,
I remained silent;
I was not into videos.

When they came for the VPN users,
I did not speak out;
I was not a VPN user.

When they came for the music enthusiasts,
I remained silent;
I was not a streaming audio user.

When they came for us e-mail users,
there was no one left to speak out.

Ashish, when you think its about them and not us you are missing the point.

2. World over stories of Infrastructure crumbling( rather going to crumble ) is what is called FUD. Blogs like Gigaom are doing a good job of educating non-technical people about the in-correctness of the picture being presented. So relax there is no apocalypse for worldwide infrastructure tomorrow or day after.

3. Developed world situation Internet Infrastructure ‘crumbling’ can’t even be compared to Indian situation where majority of users are actually on slow dialup like speeds on their mobile phones. Please do read what I have written about bandwidth available on backhaul networks and even local loop.

-Tarun