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Rolling Out Broadband Internet, On The Cheap

Posted by Hemos on from the making-it-available dept.

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.

12 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. What ifs... by Vodak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The expansion of Internet access in anyway way is a good thing, but you must ask what will happen when this government ran internet service provider starts cracking down on it's citizens internet usage habits. Because it's a government ran internet service provider would the government be held accountable for file sharing crap going on?

    1. Re:What ifs... by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then again we should be happy the United Nations doesn't have the power it wants otherwise the world would be under a single set of laws.. so with bad comes a bit of good.

      What, exactly, would be wrong from having a single set of worldwide laws?

      A system wherein anyone could impose any law on the whole world is obviously bad--but a single system of worldwide laws sounds like a fine idea.

    2. Re:What ifs... by Spunk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      (a) A system wherein anyone could impose any law on the whole world is obviously bad

      (b) but a single system of worldwide laws sounds like a fine idea.

      Ok, how do you get (b) without (a)?

  2. Subsidies??? by foooo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How much of this "low cost" is because of subsidies?

    I could (but would never) roll out low cost T1s to everyone in the USA for 10 bucks a month... just have the government pick up the tab.

    ~foooo

  3. First reaction was "Great!" until I asked myself by RLiegh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What is the cost of living like in India?

    If it's decent, does that mean that there's a greater chance that Open Source will spread with the easier availability of iso's and ftp installs?

  4. Etherlinx by ih8apple · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have you guys heard of Etherlinx?

    Apparently, they have their own way of rolling out cheap broadband. Anyone have any idea on whether their super-sized WiFi works?

    --


    Why do I h8 apple?
  5. Nice solution for the digital divide by Omega1045 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are a lot of people out there that cannot afford $40+ a month for screaming fast Internet access. Many others simply won't pay. On the surface, this looks to be an excellent tool to help us bridge the digital divide. Let the "poor" kids have some decent Internet access.

    Plus, true 128 is soooo much faster that 56k (which is usually 28.8 - 44ish).

    --

    Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein

  6. Re:First reaction was "Great!" until I asked mysel by raju1kabir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Typical household income is about $1500/year. So that's like someone in the US paying $500/month for DSL.

    --
    "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
  7. 128 kbps is hardly broadband by squarooticus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's about twice what a good modem offers these days. It might have better latency than a modem, but bandwidth? You can't get anything better than the poor-quality video streams from the web news sites with 128 kbps, and you certainly can't reliably stream 128 kbps MP3, which itself isn't CD-quality.

    I have 640/128 DSL, and while the 640 is nice and speedy and supports most of the media I want, the 128 up is terribly slow and won't even allow me to stream Oggs (192 kbps) from my home to my workplace.

    "Broadband" means something different now than it did 5 years ago.

    --
    [ home ]
  8. It is fucking ISDN !!! by johnjaydk · · Score: 2, Interesting
    After checking out the whitepaper it's plain to see that this is ISDN.

    For the telecom impaired: With ISDN you get three channels: two 64 Kbit/s voice/data pipes and a d-channel for signalling.

    This boils down to the fact that when no phone calls are taking place you get 128kbit/s. Then a call comes in and tells your isdn modem-thing via the d-channel. The modem-thing drops one of the two 64kbit/s tupes and the call is set up while data traffic continues at 64kbit/s.

    Any plain old ISDN router can play that game.

    Anyway this is so 80's...

    These days few telco's even bother with anything else but ADSL.

    --
    TCAP-Abort
  9. Stop the "it's not cheap for Indians" already! by arvindn · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I see a bunch of posts here saying its not cheap for Indians, yada yada. I see this in every story about India. Stop it and think rationally please. A PC costs about Rs 30000-40000 ($600-800). Now would someone who can afford a PC find it too much to pay Rs 850 per month for a 24 hour connection? No! Especially when you consider that it almost works out cheaper the phone bills for a dialup connection. The average Indian might be very poor, but so what? Those who can buy a computer are usually well off, and can afford this.

    Me, I pay only Rs. 650 for a 24 hr connection (fibre optic, last mile copper cable; and yes, I'm from India). BW sucks, 64 kbps, download cap is 300 megs a month, but it's far better than dialup and sufficient for all my needs, and it lets me run a server, so I'm quite happy with it.

    So this is a really good thing. I hope lots of people will use it. Quit whining.

  10. Dialup costs almost Rs2000/month by dharhas · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This actually paying Rs850 for always on internet is very reasonable for most middle class families. My parents back in India spend about an hour a day online. In India you *pay* for local phone calls unlike the US unlimited local service... So at approx Rs 1(conservatively) per min for phone charges thats already Rs1800. This doesn't even count the ISP charges which were about Rs 250 for 100 hours the last time I was there. Some ppl contacted my parents to see if they were interested in cable Internet for Rs1000 per month... Needless to say they were. On the other hand most govt run things in India suck big time.

    - dharhas