Paying Too Much For Internet Access?

I was in US a few months ago and found out that my brother who has an yahoo DSL service is paying $20 (Rs. 900) for UNLIMITED internet access with 1.5 Mbps speed (Just so we are clear. 1.5 Mbps would be 100 times faster then your regular dialup speed)

In India speeds over 1 Mbps is reserved for the Gods and us, mere mortals have to be satisfied with upto 256 Kbps. Why Gods, you may ask?

Well.. if you happen to check out the rates for internet which MTNL Delhi provides you will find out that their 1 Mbps package would make a Rs 19,999 dent in your pocket every month ($450) and if thats not enough, there is no concept of UNLIMITED… for the price you only get a 33GB data download / upload a month, which if you surf daily on a regular basis would last you only 7 days max.

Damn… if you ask an American to pay $450 a month for internet access he would sue the ISP, the government and his neighbor just for the heck!

To top it all, none of our ISP’s offer true broadband service, everyone promises “UPTO” 128 Kbps and so on. TRAI have their own definition of Broadband…

“An ‘always-on’ data connection that is able to support interactive services including Internet access and has the capability of the minimum download speed of 256 kilo bits per second (kbps) to an individual subscriber from the Point Of Presence (POP) of the service provider intending to provide Broadband service where multiple such individual Broadband connections are aggregated and the subscriber is able to access these interactive services including the Internet through this POP. The interactive services will exclude any services for which a separate licence is specifically required, for example, real-time voice transmission, except to the extent that it is presently permitted under ISP licence with Internet Telephony.”

Read the whole policy here http://www.trai.gov.in/broadbandpolicy.asp

India is one of the fastest growing countries when it comes to internet, yet we have to pay through our nose to access the net. Remember the time when the calls through a cell phone would cost Rs. 16 both ways? Airtel, Essar etc.. all made a killing. Big brother Reliance stepped in to break the market, this is exactly what is needed in the internet domain except as of now it looks like that all the big companies have a mutual agreement not to reduce prices. Looks like we have to wait for a multinational to step in because even the Gods would not want to pay such a high cost to surf 😉

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Cribbin, Internet, Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Paying Too Much For Internet Access?”

  1. Random Surfer on March 5th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    INDIA != Delhi/Mumbai

    Step out of Delhi and Mumbai and the rest of the country has 2Mbps line for 3300/month

    with a 20GB limit during the day .. and unlimited transfer between 2 and 8AM.

    It’s impossible to use up 20GB in interactive surfing. (Most people rarely exceed 4GB)

    So just schedule your large downloads for the the nights.

    You can easily download around 600-700MB per hour during the nights.. so just in the free download period you can get download around 100GB per month.

  2. Random Surfer on March 5th, 2007 at 8:03 am

    Forgot to add ..

    Everyone on a non-unlimited plan with BSNL is on 2Mbps.

  3. Which ISP is providing this service? You should have sent a link so that i could verify the info. Don’t get me wrong, i think it’s wonderful if such a thing exists but if Delhi / Mumbai don’t have it then i would surely have my reason of doubt.

  4. Update:

    TATA Indicom is coming up with dedicated 2 MBPS lines for much cheaper as compared to MTNL. Though it’s still not unlimited access but still is a good start.