I am sure most of us will agree to the fact that Broadband connection in India is name-sake. Infact, anything goes in the name of broadband.
And now, TRAI has announced plans to introduce regulations to ensure that ISPs provide internet connections based on the capacity of traffic they can carry.
Contention Ratio
Contention Ratio = ratio between the number of customers per unit bandwidth; and as per international practice, the idea number is 50:1 for home users and 20:1 for business users.
TRAI’s decision to fix on a contention ratio is being opposed by standalone ISPs.
Telcos offering similar internet services are tempted to offer predatory prices as they own the last mile, and at the same time by bundling telephony along with internet to enhance their otherwise idle last mile.” The association, while asking TRAI to defer this proposal by 2-3 years, also warned that if implemented, this could ‘wipe off the competition in the market and would benefit neither the consumer nor the industry’ – source
While standalone ISPs have all the right reasons to not serve customers efficiently, we do hope TRAI gets to move this regulation forward and rescues us from ISPs who fail to meet the definition of broadband connection.
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I doubt if it would really do well to consumer. Yes we may get good bandwidth at the end, but there are other factors to consider. A lot of consumers already think that broadband prices are high. Though I don’t have numbers, I doubt if the ISPs are making a lot of money either. So such regulations would result in blanket increase in prices and eventually slow down the growth in currently dismal broadband penetration in India. Or if that doesn’t happen in near future and there is a price war and squabble between ISPs, it could eventually result in small players loosing out, consolidation and price hike in the longer run anyway. In second case probably some poor service thrown in too.
In Tata Indicom’s broadband connection you have to login every 4-5 hours or so using their Web dialer. This beats the “always on” definition of broadband per TRAI.
The log out kills all my active SSH sessions and drops the VPN.
There might be a feature in the modem where you can setup “Always On”. Basically the modem will authenticate automatically every time and you won’t need to use the dialer software. I know BSNL has a similar setting so worth a check…
A similar login procedure is involved in Reliance Wimax broadband… its a weblogin, not even a dialer, and the consumer needs to login every 12 hours or so. Not as painful as indicom, but still not ‘always on’.