Recommendations to TRAI on Transparent Broadband Services

My Recommendations to TRAI on the Draft Direction on delivering Broadband Services in a Transparent Manner

1. In my opinion, 512 kbps as bare minimum broadband speed by itself is regressive in nature and 64 kbps sought by Airtel means to take our nation’s IT Infrastructure Standards to Stone Age and I request a minimum mandated speed of 2 Mbps to be set as broadband speed which, though does not lets us compete with the developed nations but at least put us in par with the developing nations.

2. Please add clause (f) to the consultation paper mandating to qualitatively quantify the Quality of Service currently ignored by ISPs which results in low throughput, high latency, jitters and dropped packets – As a consumer who pays for a service, I expect a standard in the service rendered by the service provider and today there is no standardized measuring mechanism or process for reparation when the set standard is not met by the Service Provider.

3. Service Providers are to be transparent about the minimum committed speed on 2G/3G/4G Stacks. It is important to note the misuse of the term “up to” by ISPs, whereas there is no minimum QoS ever mentioned by the Service Providers. To give you an example, I have never seen the practical transfer speed of 500 kbps on EDGE let alone the theoretical possibility of 1 Mbps and it is the same case with both HSPA and HSPA+, not even 50% of the theoretical transfer speed of 14.4 and 16Mbps respectively has been experienced.

4. Complaints by users are generally treated as individual incidents and without much of importance given in resolving the issue. A cumulative report of customer complaints are to be published by the Service Providers month over month and the Plan of Action for mitigating and improvement of service to be shared as well – After all, this is a bare minimum expectation as they are answerable to the consumers who pay to avail the service. This should serve as a Key Performance Indicator for the ISP region wise and consumers can take informed decision basis the same.

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