Mumbai: Lashing out at Indian telcos, a petition has been filed on an online portal, asking telecom regulator TRAI and the Telecom Ministry to employ an improved regulatory framework to guarantee uninterrupted mobile connectivity.
A petition filed by the Logical Indian on Change.org suggested that most Indian telcos ‘advertise’ high-speed connections of 21 to 100 Mbps but barely deliver 2 Mbps. Further pointing out intricacies, the petition highlighted the fact that phone signals are horrible, and data speeds even worse.
Strengthening the claims of the petition is this report by Akamai technology, pointing out that India has the lowest average internet connection speed in Asia.
Some of the people who have supported the petition shared their experiences, and testified to the fact that there is a critical problem concerning irregular internet speeds in the country.
A resident of Delhi, Venu Venugopalan, said that the minimum broadband speed in India is still 512kbps, while other developing countries are far ahead in the race.
He said: “There are many ISP's who actually want minimum broadband speed to be further reduced to 64kbps! These are company who are trying to maximize profit, and not investing on building up infrastructure.”
“These companies promise you good speeds, but it comes with a rider, like you have to stick to a FUP limit (Fair usage policy), which is a method to get more money from the customer,” he added.
He further explained that “TRAI needs to frame policies that benefit consumers” rather than protecting many such big conglomerates, who are keen on maximizing their own profits.
Sharing a small anecdote regarding his experience, Swaraj Prasad, a resident of Lucknow, said, “Once, I was in roaming from UP to Bihar, Idea failed to give services after trying too many calls from service center. If their network coverage is bad, they can tell to customers, but they keep on boasting so many things.”
Not only areas in UP and Bihar but there are other parts in India (especially rural ones) where Internet connectivity is appalling, according to this report in Times of India.
Commenting on the issue, senior analyst at Counterpoint research Tarun Pathak told Deccan Chronicle that there are two ways to look at it.
He said, “If we look at connectivity at a holistic level it is surely not at the expected level when compared with other emerging countries but on the other hand if we take into account past few quarters things have been changing rather rapidly, be it proliferation of LTE networks or adoption of high speed broadband access which grew YoY.”
“The internet penetration in India is still close to third of its potential population , means that there is still lot of room for players to grow," he added.
Companies boast, delivery not at par
Recently a lot of telecom giants have stepped up their efforts to showcase their ‘high-speed’ 4G connections via ads. On the contrary, reports state that the same companies have failed miserably to match customer expectations. In fact, some users have said that the companies should trying fixing their 3G offering before boasting about their high-speed 4G offerings.
Some users have complained that no matter wherever they are, most of them have to deal with constant buffering problems almost every time they try to play a mere Youtube video. Fed up of one telecom company’s service, numerous customers switched to other operators in the hope of getting better connectivity, only to face similar problems.
Not only have users grilled telcos for coming up with ‘fancy’ ads but they have also requested Trai and the Telecom Ministry to put in a new framework that can deal with several issues that haunt internet users in the country, especially from rural areas.
Present state of internet
The petition also suggested that TRAI had earlier released a paper to set the minimum speed for 3G speed at 1 Mbps; however, Telcos constantly keep on flouting the rule time and again.
According to this report by Medianama, the regulatory body had introduced the paper in 2014 but there has no development after that. Telcos are openly irregular internet speeds with out facing any consequences, as per the petition. Moreover, a 2015 report by Ericsson said that 48 per cent mobile customers found no difference between 2G and 3G speeds.
While Trai has imposed penalties of Rs 1.5 lakhs for failing to match 3G connectivity standards, the government regulatory bodies should take a stricter stance to rectify the situation. Also, Trai’s verdicts are purely based on the quality of service (QOS) reports submitted by the telcos themselves; not by an impartial body.
With the average internet connection at just 2.7 Mbps, India is one of the slowest mobile connected countries in the Asia Pacific and that too at a time when it needs it the most.
