scrapo wrote:
Dinesh A. Joshi wrote:
Unlike Indian ISPs which will shut you off if you exceed the limit. What MTNL and other ISPs have done is, they've conned the Indian consumer. 200MB / month is a freakin' joke.
yes, they are offering a plan for Rs. 200 (US$ 4 per month) which is a rate you will not find in USA. This is a plan that is meant for light home users, people who are only going to use it to check their emails once a day. the popularity of the scheme is because in India, people want small slice service. Its a very good move. And very practical. If you want more usage, take a better plan. Whats stopping you ?
In office we are on an MTNL plan that gives us close to guaranteed 2 mbps speed which we need for our ERP connectivity and we are paying for that good quality bandwidth. There is a 45gb cap, but i know we are not going to use more than 15gb in a month except when a new Fedora version is put up. We are business users, and we do not go and download movies so we dont need 500gb downloads.
India is heavily populated and this excess demand drives the monopoly of big players in the internet scene. While it is true that if we want more download limit, we should pay more, the limits that are set do not do justice to the amount that is collected by them from us. Once a cable is laid to the home/office, and rent for the same is collected every month, it does not matter how much data goes through it. Internet is nothing but a mega network of machines. If international bandwidth is expensive, at least local sites should be freely accessible with no traffic limit, once the maximum speed per user is already preset.
But what have you lawyers done about it?
My lawyer have not been put to that task. I vote with my wallet. I chose a service I want, and pay for it. If i am not happy with it, I switch to what options I have. The market will get them in line soon enough. Provided ofcouse the market actually wants such a thing. If you are the only person wanting 500gb transfer and wanting to pay Rs. 1000 per month for it, the vendors are not going to bother.
As mentioned above, we are too large in numbers and if a few of us go away, more will come in. However as more players step in to provide competition, things will definitely improve and this change is already taking place.