Slow Internet speed, a frequent complaint of broadband and dial-up Net customers in India, may soon be addressed. Telecoms regulator Trai wants regulations in place to ensure that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) providers connections based only on the capacity of traffic they can carry. Trai has said that most ISPs compromise on quality by accommodating a higher number of subscribers bringing down broadband speeds and congesting networks.
This move comes as the regulator has been flooded with complaints that broadband/dial- up speeds are almost always lower than those promised by the operators.
Trai has also said that the regulations would also protect the interests of consumers and enhance customer satisfaction'. Further, justifying its plan, Trai said that the concept of virtual office, remote office is gaining popularity. E-Commerce, e-health, video world, virtual tours and E-marts are some other emerging popular applications requiring huge bandwidth which are time sensitive also. In such a scenario, quality of service becomes of prime importance.
The number of high speed Internet connections an ISP can support depends on the bandwidth availability. The regulator wants norms that will specify the ratio between the number of customers per unit bandwidth which is known as contention ratio. As per international practices, the average contention ratio for a home user package is 50:1 and that for business package is 20:1.
Source: Economic Times Trai plans norms for faster Net connections
