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Rolling Out Broadband Internet, On The Cheap
Mathamota writes "The goverment controlled telephone company in the city of Kolkata (Calcutta), India is providing a Internet access service called DIAS (Direct Internet Access System) which provides 24 hour connection at 128kbps (when the phone is being used, it drops to 64). However, the best part is that the cost of Plan I (which has a data transfer limit of 500 megs) is only Rs 825 ($ 16.50) per month, all inclusive.
The technology used in this stuff is quite interesting, and there is a whitepaper available at the site of the company which developed the system." At first glance, it sounds just like plain old ISDN; but after reading the white paper, it's a bit different. Cool idea.
"best part is that the cost of Plan I (which has a data transfer limit of 500 megs) is only Rs 825 ($ 16.50)"
Sure, for us $16.50 doesn't sound bad, but in India where they obviously make more than we do (*sarcasm*)?
Btw, what is this "Rs", CIA world factbook shows "Indian rupee (INR)" as being India's currency?
Question everything.
After reading this article I msg'd a punjab I know on IRC for his insight. He told me his family back in India tried this service and found it to be much slower than 128k most of the time and outages were frequent. So I guess you can say the "cheap" price reflects the quality of the servers hosting the service.
Yes, this is really not cheap, even for people making good money in India. A friend of mine was telling me how a couple of years ago, he got an offer of around $750/month, right out of college for some sort of programming job. He said this was an obscene amount of money, not just by the standards of the average Indian, but also by other friends who had gotten IT-related jobs. He seemed to think it was comparable to making close to 6 figures in USD. I've had other friends say things like "multiply by 60" to get the idea of how much lower the cost of everyday items (food, clothing, etc) is.
So, the cost for this is something like 1/40 of even a well-off middle class Indian.
The average daily earning of an adult male (!) in India is estimated to be in the range of Rs. 80. If your internet connection is Rs. 825... well, can you do the math.
First, I am an Indian. Now to the ground reality in India. When I used to have a dialup connection, I used to pay Rs 24 per hour for phone charges and Rs 10 for internet. If I stay online for 2 hours in a day, that would mean I spend about 70 rupees a day. For 30 days, that would make it 2100 rupees or something like 45 USD per month for a crappy dialup. Compare this with this solition. I pay $16.50 and thats it. So IMHO, its not bad atall. But yes, Bengal, whose capital is Kolkatta, is maybe the only INdian state still ruled by commies, so don't expect the phone company to let lose its orn grip anytime soon. And quality of serivce is something I wud rather not comment out, it sucks too much. Actually its fine when it works.. but its when it doesnt work, then finding someone who knows aboutt the system is a nightmare. Nice idea though.
What's under yellowstone?
*sigh* and slashdot JUST had an article on this in the past week.
> 128 kbps is hardly broadband
How do you figure based on that information?
Is a blue car fast?
Is a baby that crys tall?
Is a sharp knife long?
> 128 kbps is hardly broadband
128 kbps - this is a speed, measuring a type of bandwidth.
is hardly - this is (basically) a logical 'not'.
broadband - this is the type of carrier data is sent over.
You realize if a pair of wires uses a protocol to send both IP data and any other data at all that isnt IP, it is broadband, EVEN if the IP data can only be sent at 10 bytes per second?
The article describes this as having both phone/voice service as well as IP service over it.
Unless they are actually encapsulating one form of data over the other, like true ISDN does, then it is broadband. period. nothing about the speed comes into play here.
> "Broadband" means something different now than it did 5 years ago.
No, its always meant the same thing from when the terms 'broadband' and 'baseband' were made. You are just using it incorrectly.
Ignoring the whole household vs salary argument (how many Indian families are multi-income?) take a look at the two important numbers here:
Indian Average Household Income - $2,847
Indian Median Household Income - $1,005
Source - Asian Demographics Note these are Urban households which is what is applicable in this case.
The reason for the huge difference is due to the huge gap between the poor and the wealthy in India. In the US the average is $49K and the median is $42K which is a much smaller gap.
In summary, the two things you need to take into consideration in your argument are the number of multi-income families in India (couldn't find that number) and the gap between the wealthy and the poor.
A lot of people seem to think that the pricing is too high. However, the target market - the middle-class/upper-class, could easily afford this. In my house the telephone bill (mostly due to net) comes to around Rs.2,500. I would jump at this opportunity, and so would almost all of my friends.
Now whether 128Kbps is broadband is a different argument, but it sure beats crappy 33.1Kbps, and there would be no per-minute charge!!
Slightly OT. The IIT (Indian Inst of Tech. ) decided a few years ago, that waiting for multi-nationals to bring in new tech that was cheap enough for use in India was pointless. The MNC's were used to at least $40 revenue per phone line per month, and that is what they were expecting in India. The IIT decided that it would go for lower-cost/lower-speed solutions using the latest in tech to drive the prices down, instead of increasing the features.
A famous anecdote that one of the Professors there likes to relate - Around the 80's , all the digital phone switches used in India were imported. Companies like Alcatel, Ericsson, etc. used to charge a hefty bundle for them. Then C-DoT (Center for Development of Telecom) stepped in and made their own digital switch for a fraction of the cost. Almost overnight, the MNC's were forced to drop their prices in order to compete. This is what Banyan Networks, and a host of other small startups, incubated at IIT, want to do in India.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Im from India too and am in India(Bangalore) right now(temporarily). This offer of 128k slowband(?) came out a month or so ago.
It took me 4 days just to get in contact with a person who knew about this system. This system is going to come to my area only after 3-4 months. Ill be gone from here by that time.
My uncle in Calcutta has got this service and he says it sucks big time. The 128k is closer to 56k and its not reliable at all. I have 64k cable right now and I am paying 23 $ for 600mb bandwidth cap.
Back in the US I was used to 1 gb(on 768k charter cable) a day downloads for 2 years. When I came back, I ran up bills of 500 $ in 3 months using a 56k modem. I switched to cable and still run up bills of about 100 $ a month for 3 Gb bandwidth usage. A 384k connection here costs ~620 $ a month, and I used to pay 23 $ for cable in the US. Broadband still ain't cheap in India. Too bad.