Trai wants ISPs to cut net user club to ensure speed

NEW DELHI: Painfully slow internet speed, a frequent complaint of broadband and dial-up net users in India, may soon be addressed. Telecom regulator Trai wants regulations in place to ensure that internet service providers (ISPs) provide connections based only on the capacity of traffic they can carry.

Trai is of the view that most ISPs compromise on quality by accommodating a higher number of subscribers, thus affecting broadband speeds and congesting networks. This move comes as the regulator has been flooded with complaints that broadband/dial-up speeds are almost always lower than those promised by the operators.

Trai has also said the regulations would also protect the interests of consumers and thus, enhance customer satisfaction. Justifying its plan, Trai said, ���The concept of virtual office and remote office is gaining popularity. E-Commerce, e-health, video world, virtual tours and e-marts are some of the other emerging popular applications requiring huge bandwidth which are time-sensitive. In such a scenario, quality of service is of prime importance.���

The number of high-speed Internet connections an ISP can support depends on the bandwidth availability. The regulator also wants certain guidelines that will specify the ratio between the number of customers per unit bandwidth, which is known as contention ratio.

As per international practices, the average contention ratio for a home user package is 50:1 and that for business package is 20:1.