27/03/2016
Why is the internet speed slow in India?
This maybe shocking, but the primary reason is 'low demand for high speed internet'!
If you can get 30 people to signup for high-speed internet within 300 meter radius of your house, then your internet service provider would be happy to give you high speed internet! I am not just making this up, but I really tried to do it about 3 years ago.
About until 1.5years ago, the only internet provider at my location was BSNL. I was using their 4 Mbps plan which was the highest possible plan at my location, and I was the only person using that plan at my locality, paying Rs 1700 per month.
Yes, 4 Mbps is a pretty descend speed and was enough to watch YouTube videos and to maks Skype calls. Although I was on an 'Unlimited' plan, there was a strange thing called FUP or Fair Usage Policy in India, which throttles your speed to 512Kbps if you use more than 20GB data. I used to hit that limit within 20 days every month, even if I do everything to conserve data. (FUP is still there in India)
This may still look good to many Indian users in lower plans, but I never received 4 Mbps for the first few months. I was consistently getting around 1.5 Mbps instead!
I phoned them and complained. They said, it was due to bad wires leading upto my home. Being a tech enthusiast, I checked my modem's status, and found 'SNR' and 'Line attenuation' to be normal and data-rate to be exactly 2048 Kbps. Aahaa...! I found the culprit, this is not a problem with the wires, instead BSNL was sending me only 2Mbps from their side and I was paying for 4Mbps.
SNR or 'Signal to Noise Ratio' is a measurement that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. Line attenuation is a measure of how much the signal has degraded between ISP and your modem.
I phoned BSNL again and informed them in detail that the problem is on their side, but they didn't seem to understand it and continued to insist that the problem is with the wires. In few days they even send a person to check the wires!
After few weeks, I lost hope with BSNL's technical staff, so I researched the issue myself on the internet and found a note written by someone that BSNL had a policy many years ago to restrict the speed at 2Mbps per connection to prevent anyone from unauthorisedly using more bandwidth.
After many phone calls to different people at BSNL, they finally understood that this was the problem and fixed it. (Although, 2 years later, they will downgrade/upgrade their system and this problem will re-emerge and I won't solve it.)
Now, although I had a 4 Mbps connection, I was still facing frequent disconnections due to 'breaking of wires' and 'problems at their DSLAM' every month.
Most of the homes in India including mine were connected to internet through 'twisted pair cable' or in simple words 'telephone line'. Since BSNL had near monopoly in telephone business, it was easy for them to provide internet through their phone lines without laying new cables.
The maximum internet speed practically possible through such cables is 4 to 8Mbps. During those times, BSNL was advertising FTTH(Fiber To The Home). (Link)
FTTH means they are going to lay fiber optic cables all the way to our homes! Fiber optic cables are awesome, they can support speeds upto 1Gbps and it is practically feasible for ISPs to give 100Mbps speeds. Fiber optic cables use light instead of electricity to transfer data. Yes, light is transmitted through these cables which are usually made of plastic or glass.
But, laying fiber optic cables to homes is very expensive for the internet service providers. It can cost lakhs of Ruppes to lay cables upto your home. This is a pretty huge investment for internet companies, so they can offer such services to only those locations which they think are profitable.
Fiber optics is not a new technology, infact the ISPs themselves get internet through high speed fiber optic cables to their office. The cables connecting different countries together are also fiber optic cables. Most 3g/4g towers are also connected via fiber optic cables. Only, the last mile between the ISP and your home is still using other cables.
I knew that BSNL's budget for investments in FTTH will be over soon and they will ignore my location forever as it is a village like area. So, I decided to actively send emails to the BSNL officials and call the number which was advertised in their FTTH campaign.
I had no hopes that anyone would showup, but they did. I got a call from BSNL about a week later saying that they are sending a team to inspect my location. A van full of people came to my place to check the feasibility for fiber optic connection. They checked around and said it would cost them around Rs 5 lakhs to lay fiber optic cables to my location and it would be justifiable only if they can get 30+ regular users.
Another problem for these companies is that, while laying a cable to a house, the only potential customer is the occupant of that house. If that customer stops paying, then nothing can be done about the cable and that would be a huge loss for the company. This is the main reason why private companies are not interested in investing in this field.
They said, my location is economically in-feasible, as it is hard to get that many users. They were right, I tried to signup 30+ users for FTTH, but couldn't get enough takers. This was 3.5 years ago.
At that time, I had send emails and made calls to a local TV cable company too, but they were not interested in providing internet to my area.
Surprisingly, two years later I would meet that TV cable company's local agent at a friend's place and that guy was apparently looking to expand their internet business! I requested him to lay fiber to my home and he said he will consider it. A month later, this awesome guy connected my house with fiber optic cable at much less cost compared to BSNL!
My current internet plan :- 10Mbps downstream, 5Mbps upstream Unlimited* costing Rs1305 per month.(* FUP:- Speed decreases to 1Mbps after 40GB and I continue to cross that limit in 20days every month.) They have plans up to 100Mbps.
As far as I know, that guy got some 20 customers from here. I don't know if it is profitable for them, but I am happy. Many of the people who joined his service were frustrated ex-BSNL users.
