User perception surveys in broadband quality of service have often reflected less than satisfactory

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experiences, whereas technical surveys have detected promised broadband speeds being delivered by internet service providers (ISPs). This, it has been inferred, is because of the way broadband is defined across countries.

“This is not a grouse of the developing world alone. BBC has reported these surveys in countries like UK and Canada as well,” assures Chanuka Wattegama, a senior researcher at LIRNEAsia, a South Asian policy think-tank. This organisation, in collaboration with the Telecommunication and Computer Networks (TeNeT) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), has arrived at the conclusion that the difference between promised and experienced speeds occur because the speed is fundamentally different.

“TRAI has defined broadband as a minimum of 256 kbps in terms of speed at the operator to consumer level. This is the speed at which the user connects to his ISP’s server, through a dedicated line laid to his house,” explains Prof Timothy A Gonsalves of TeNeT. “But, while surfing, he has to connect to servers of websites located nationally and internationally, through his ISP. These multiple form of speed may be lower.”

Studies conducted by TeNeT at six major cities and some towns in India indicated that the time taken by the user to connect to the ISP is about 10 ms (millisecond), whereas that taken by the ISP to connect to an external server is 29 ms. The time taken to link with an international server is 231 ms. “So, the bottlenecks are at the external server points. Our studies have shown that it is possible for ISPs to manage their networks more efficiently thereby reducing these time periods by half,” said Gonsalves.

The good news is that despite such discrepancies, Indian ISPs offer broadband quality and actual download speed for national servers. For international servers, the speed is reduced by 28 per cent. “This is because many ISPs are delivering more than what they promise at the entry level anyway,” Wattegama said. TRAI has also been asked for redefining broadband quality in actual download speed, for quality may drop when broadband penetration increases.

“As of now, it is not fair to demand drastically higher broadband speed given the price sensitivity. But, even when mobile telephony has reached a 30 per cent penetration at one fourth of global tariffs, we are beginning to see increasing call drops,” Wattegama added. Given that wireless broadband is expected to increase broadband penetration in India, the two organisations have also recommended to TRAI that ISPs should adhere to a published contention ratio.