Hi,
I was just talking with a Swedish friend and I wondered what is keeping India from going broadband? I mean people in foreign countries commonly have 2Mbit connections without download restrictions. My friend is currently studying in a university where he gets to share a 100Mbps 24x7 connection amongst 3 people and the authorities don't care about the downloads, only the uploads :O And he says the fees are included in the university's fees. I personally have logged into his server and downloaded many things, just for fun ^^ and it feels great to download at those speeds from international mirrors!
Forget about 100Mbps. A friend in Netherlands has a 8Mbps DSL connection. No restrictions what-so-ever. The cost is very reasonable. In Indian rupees it works out to 1200-1500 bucks. I am not saying that foreign countries are a haven for those who feel the need for speed, rather I am simply saying that the conditions are much better than India. This is a big fact that the internet sucks in India and despite whatever measures our IT / Telecom minister(s) have taken to improve the situation, it hasn't made much of a difference. I still see MTNL DSL being overly priced. Yes, the 200MB / 400MB or whatever limit they put sucks.
I can't see any *real* ISPs. Why is it so? Why is it so difficult for them to provide us with fast connectivity? Are the bandwidth prices so high that they cant afford to give us anything better? Are they just lazy? Are they just plain stupid? How are these ISPs "billed"? What are the costs they incurr? I think now TATA, Reliance and other Indian players own major underwater submarine cables, so they should be able to ease the congestion and provide super fast connectivity! What gives here? I read some where that TATA bought Tyco and Tyco's underwater submarine cables' _unlit_ capacity was some Terabits! Reliance purchased FLAG telecom. It too has a huge network and a huge capacity! WTF? India, as a *whole* uses some few hunderd Megabits of capacity and here we have terabits of capacity! Why are lagging behind then? I wan't some answers and I think you guys are best equipped to answer them.
Are we really an IT super power? Or are we living a dream?
On 24/09/05 17:30 +0000, Dinesh Joshi wrote:
Hi,
I was just talking with a Swedish friend and I wondered what is keeping India from going broadband? I mean people in foreign countries commonly
The initial investment. If you want to hook up your neighbourhood with decent ethernet (100 Mbit symmetric, public IPs...), it will cost in the neighbourhood of 5K/household + the ISP license. Hooking up fewer subscribers will actually increase the per user cost.
Running cost would be your bandwidth to the Internet/number of users + marketing + salaries + overheads.
have 2Mbit connections without download restrictions. My friend is currently studying in a university where he gets to share a 100Mbps 24x7 connection amongst 3 people and the authorities don't care about the downloads, only the uploads :O And he says the fees are included in the university's fees. I personally have logged into his server and downloaded many things, just for fun ^^ and it feels great to download at those speeds from international mirrors!
Forget about 100Mbps. A friend in Netherlands has a 8Mbps DSL connection. No restrictions what-so-ever. The cost is very reasonable. In Indian rupees it works out to 1200-1500 bucks. I am not saying that
Look at Sweden/Norway/Japan/HK instead.
foreign countries are a haven for those who feel the need for speed, rather I am simply saying that the conditions are much better than India. This is a big fact that the internet sucks in India and despite whatever measures our IT / Telecom minister(s) have taken to improve the situation, it hasn't made much of a difference. I still see MTNL DSL being overly priced. Yes, the 200MB / 400MB or whatever limit they put sucks.
If you want to see any real improvements, you will have to bypass the telecom operators.
I can't see any *real* ISPs. Why is it so? Why is it so difficult for them to provide us with fast connectivity? Are the bandwidth prices so high that they cant afford to give us anything better? Are they just
Oh, bandwidth prices are fairly low. They just don't want to provide end users with low cost bandwidth, because a lot of people would move away from dedicated circuits (or would demand and enforce SLAs at the same price).
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Alternatively, lobby the government to split the telcos into connectivity providers and service providers and allow equal access to the wires to all those who want it.
Devdas Bhagat
Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Can you please explain what is community ISP? Does it exist anywhere in India or World. Is it possible in Indian context and law.
To my understanding, it is more or less easy and applicable to big big apartments (around 30-40 flats and more) in the cities. What you say?
On 25/09/05 01:44 +0530, Guru prasath wrote:
Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Can you please explain what is community ISP? Does it exist anywhere in India or World. Is it possible in Indian context and law.
As in "ISP owned and used by the community of users it serves". Plenty of examples in the US, and a few in Europe. There is nothing in Indian law which says that you cannot do this here. It just hasn't been done before.
To my understanding, it is more or less easy and applicable to big big apartments (around 30-40 flats and more) in the cities. What you say?
Actually, if you want to do it right, managed switches, routers and structured cabling are needed. You can get a 48 port switch with L2 packet control for about 35K INR (IIRC, verify prices with your local vendor, and in this case, the software on the switch is more important than the hardware itself). You will have to size the router depending on how much bandwidth you plan to buy, and then get an ISP license.
Running costs would vary from a couple of hundred INR per user per month for a good setup, to about 1500 per user per month for a bad one.
Keep in mind that the bigger your setup, the lower the initial cost per user is.
Devdas Bhagat
On Saturday 24 September 2005 16:28, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Look at Sweden/Norway/Japan/HK instead.
For what? I already quoted Sweden and Netherlands...
If you want to see any real improvements, you will have to bypass the telecom operators.
Whys that? How are the telcos hurdles in this? What about providers like 7star / Reliance Powersurfer which have ethernet networks?
Oh, bandwidth prices are fairly low. They just don't want to provide end users with low cost bandwidth, because a lot of people would move away from dedicated circuits (or would demand and enforce SLAs at the same price).
Exactly how low are they? Where will I get more info on how an ISP operates? Are the prices of international bandwidth available freely over the internet?? Google didn't help much.
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Yeah. I wish. But unfortunately people are too ignorant and lazy to actually invest their time / money / effort in such a project...
On 24/09/05 22:44 +0000, Dinesh Joshi wrote:
On Saturday 24 September 2005 16:28, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Look at Sweden/Norway/Japan/HK instead.
For what? I already quoted Sweden and Netherlands...
Oh, Norway, Japan and HK are a bit cheaper.
If you want to see any real improvements, you will have to bypass the telecom operators.
Whys that? How are the telcos hurdles in this? What about providers like 7star / Reliance Powersurfer which have ethernet networks?
Because the telcos have vested interest in selling their service at maximum cost, even if it doesn't increase the size of the pie. Decent competition helps.
Oh, bandwidth prices are fairly low. They just don't want to provide end users with low cost bandwidth, because a lot of people would move away from dedicated circuits (or would demand and enforce SLAs at the same price).
Exactly how low are they? Where will I get more info on how an ISP operates? Are the prices of international bandwidth available freely over the internet?? Google didn't help much.
You could see the BSNL and VSNL web pages, or contact them and ask. TRAI also set maximum caps on prices from time to time.
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Yeah. I wish. But unfortunately people are too ignorant and lazy to actually invest their time / money / effort in such a project...
I will wait for you to actually try. I did. Turns out people were far more interested in TV.
Devdas Bhagat
Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Oh, bandwidth prices are fairly low. They just don't want to provide end users with low cost bandwidth, because a lot of people would move away from dedicated circuits (or would demand and enforce SLAs at the same price).
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Alternatively, lobby the government to split the telcos into connectivity providers and service providers and allow equal access to the wires to all those who want it.
One good development will be taking happenning in India and thats WIMAX. Its meant to overcome the difficulties of last mile connectivity problems in developing countries and provide broadband services. They alreay tried it out in Himachal Pradesh.
Regards,
Rony.
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On 25/09/05 13:40 +0530, Rony Bill wrote: <snip>
One good development will be taking happenning in India and thats WIMAX. Its meant to overcome the difficulties of last mile connectivity problems in developing countries and provide broadband services. They alreay tried it out in Himachal Pradesh.
Wireless doesn't exactly scale in densely populated areas. And WiMax is licensed spectrum only. Wimax will at most replace the link from the backbone to the last mile (which is not a problem in Mumbai).
802.11x is meant to solve the last mile issue, and that isn't really a scalable solution.
Devdas Bhagat
Devdas Bhagat wrote:
Oh, bandwidth prices are fairly low. They just don't want to provide end users with low cost bandwidth, because a lot of people would move away from dedicated circuits (or would demand and enforce SLAs at the same price).
Feel free to get a few hundred/thousand of your neighbours together and start off a community ISP.
Alternatively, lobby the government to split the telcos into connectivity providers and service providers and allow equal access to the wires to all those who want it.
One good development will be happenning in India and thats WIMAX. Its meant to overcome the difficulties of last mile connectivity problems in developing countries and provide broadband services. They alreay tried it out in Himachal Pradesh.
Regards,
Rony.
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On Sunday 25 September 2005 08:11, Rony Bill wrote:
One good development will be happenning in India and thats WIMAX. Its meant to overcome the difficulties of last mile connectivity problems in developing countries and provide broadband services. They alreay tried it out in Himachal Pradesh.
In Mangalore as well, i guess.
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Devdas Bhagat -
Dinesh Joshi -
Guru prasath -
Rony Bill