Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Broadband in India
One of the things that used to annoy me the first few times I returned to India was the quality of Internet access (yes, one does get used to Internet-2, cable, wireless etc). Dial-up was painfully slow and broadband was nowhere on the horizon. But I had been reading about cable and DSL beginning to catch on in parts of India. The adoption of broadband was inevitable and some of us had been predicting it for years for one simple reason -- dial-up access is bloody expensive.
Though the ISP charges are low ($15 for 100 hours, free night surfing etc), one gets butchered on the phone bill since local access is billed every 3 minutes. At my usage levels, the phone bill alone could cross $100 every month. The East Asian experience has shown that this pricing model actually has a plus point -- uptake of broadband is much quicker. Compare this with the United States (and its flat-rate pricing model for local access) which is having trouble convincing people to move to broadband and thereby use up all that dark fiber. Of course, things will change in the U.S. too as users find applications that work better with broadband like Video-on-Demand and so on.
In contrast, Indians can switch to broadband with very little prodding. The fixed cost is low and mostly refundable. Beyond that, monthly rates hover between $12 and $20, depending on the plan selected. In addition, the fixed phone line remains free. It was very easy then to convince even a techno-peasant like my mother to shift to broadband cable. My first brush with broadband at home has had mixed results. The quality of coax seems a little dodgy. The provider has about 12 MBps of bandwidth (they claim to constantly up this), which it then splits among about 3,000 subscribers (not all of them online at the same time, of course). So, one's download speeds really does vary by time of day. At times you get reasonably fast speeds, but at times speeds drop to dial-up levels or worse. So, the primary advantages of home cable are much lower costs for access (assuming heavy access) and always-on connectivity rather than blazing download speeds, which is the reason why I use broadband in New York.
Today, I decided to check out Reliance's Web World -- a fast growing group of Internet/gaming parlours. According to the managers, each Web World has 26 Mbps available, which is then split among about 50 terminals. They guarantee 256 Kbps or above, which is not bad at all, and that too for Rs 0.35 per minute (don't even bother converting that to USD, it's too low). Like most other major broadband parlours in India, an account created in any one city can be used right across the country. What is *very* different about Web World is the sheer amount of gaming going on. I'd say the average age of the crowd around me is about 16 and these kids are just gaming against each other and against kids in other cities, who are logged in at various other Web Worlds. This is in addition to all the usual Internet based-gaming, chatting etc.
Clearly, Reliance has begin to identify ways to utilise all of that fiber they've laid across the length and breadth of the country (the group invested about $6 billion in laying fiber). So, if any of you are in India looking for faster access than what you would get at dial-up parlours, I'd say try Reliance. And while you're at it, try the gaming too. I just did. Sort-of interesting.
Though the ISP charges are low ($15 for 100 hours, free night surfing etc), one gets butchered on the phone bill since local access is billed every 3 minutes. At my usage levels, the phone bill alone could cross $100 every month. The East Asian experience has shown that this pricing model actually has a plus point -- uptake of broadband is much quicker. Compare this with the United States (and its flat-rate pricing model for local access) which is having trouble convincing people to move to broadband and thereby use up all that dark fiber. Of course, things will change in the U.S. too as users find applications that work better with broadband like Video-on-Demand and so on.
In contrast, Indians can switch to broadband with very little prodding. The fixed cost is low and mostly refundable. Beyond that, monthly rates hover between $12 and $20, depending on the plan selected. In addition, the fixed phone line remains free. It was very easy then to convince even a techno-peasant like my mother to shift to broadband cable. My first brush with broadband at home has had mixed results. The quality of coax seems a little dodgy. The provider has about 12 MBps of bandwidth (they claim to constantly up this), which it then splits among about 3,000 subscribers (not all of them online at the same time, of course). So, one's download speeds really does vary by time of day. At times you get reasonably fast speeds, but at times speeds drop to dial-up levels or worse. So, the primary advantages of home cable are much lower costs for access (assuming heavy access) and always-on connectivity rather than blazing download speeds, which is the reason why I use broadband in New York.
Today, I decided to check out Reliance's Web World -- a fast growing group of Internet/gaming parlours. According to the managers, each Web World has 26 Mbps available, which is then split among about 50 terminals. They guarantee 256 Kbps or above, which is not bad at all, and that too for Rs 0.35 per minute (don't even bother converting that to USD, it's too low). Like most other major broadband parlours in India, an account created in any one city can be used right across the country. What is *very* different about Web World is the sheer amount of gaming going on. I'd say the average age of the crowd around me is about 16 and these kids are just gaming against each other and against kids in other cities, who are logged in at various other Web Worlds. This is in addition to all the usual Internet based-gaming, chatting etc.
Clearly, Reliance has begin to identify ways to utilise all of that fiber they've laid across the length and breadth of the country (the group invested about $6 billion in laying fiber). So, if any of you are in India looking for faster access than what you would get at dial-up parlours, I'd say try Reliance. And while you're at it, try the gaming too. I just did. Sort-of interesting.
