The Hindu Business Line : ‘Let minimum broadband speed be kept at 256 Kbps’

Cap on providers
A typical start-up broadband plan with 256 Kbps is available at a monthly charge of Rs 250.
For a connection with minimum 2 Mbps speed, the monthly charge is Rs 3,300.
Also, the available fixed line infrastructure is not enough to support high bandwidth broadband connections.

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Jan. 1 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is against raising the minimum prescribed speeds for broadband connections from its present level of 256 Kbps.

In a status paper issued on Tuesday, the telecom regulator has said that there are not too many takers for higher speed broadband connections in the country owing to steep tariffs and poor wire line infrastructure.

“If we analyse the present broadband subscriber base in India on the basis of committed connection speed, the results indicate that majority of subscribers (96 per cent) are using broadband plans which define minimum speed as 256 Kbps. It is important to note that higher broadband speed options (at least 2Mbps) are available to the subscribers but very limited subscribers have opted for higher broadband speed,” TRAI said.

A typical start-up broadband plan with 256 Kilo bytes per second (Kbps) is available at a monthly charge of Rs 250 as against monthly charge of Rs 3,300 for a connection with minimum 2 Mbps connection speed.

Many subscribers do not perceive any higher utility attached with such a higher cost value plan. “Broadband connection with higher speed, say 2 Mbps, is therefore less favoured due to higher tariff structure and more importantly due to its lower perceived utility at present,” the TRAI paper said.

While certain applications such as e-mail, voice and video chatting can be supported by a bandwidth of 256 Kbps, real-time applications, involving video and multi-media applications, require much higher bandwidth.

TRAI, however pointed out that there aren’t too many such applications at present that require high speeds.

The regulator has highlighted that the target of achieving 9 million broadband subscribers by the end of 2007 has not been achieved even with 256 Kbps speed connection.

It has also pointed out that the available fixed line infrastructure of copper and optic fibre cables is not enough to support high bandwidth broadband connections. “Unless optical fibre cable networks are laid on large scale, it will be difficult to provide high speed Internet access. India is a vast country and geographically it is not very easy to deploy the access network to support higher bandwidth with affordable prices,” TRAI said.

It said that even with wireless technologies such as Wi-Max very high speed connections may not be possible.

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