Broadband in India
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The phrase "broadband in India" is an oxymoron in itself. Here's an interesting page - http://broadband.sify.com/showplan.php?id=46 .... which is a price chart for one of the two "broadband" service providers in my city (of 2+ million population).
Broadband plans - 256 kbps
"Hi Speed" plans - 64 and 128 kbps.Up until a few months ago this company was offering 32 kbps "broadband" connections (anything which doesn't use the phone line, no matter what the bandwidth, seemed like broadband). Product names changed when the Government redefined broadband to mean a minimum of 256 kbps line speed. Of course that's the line speed, actual throughput has not been standardized.
To get an idea of the prices, just divide them by ten to get a rough US dollar equivalent. Yes it's expensive also. The other ISP, a government service, costs about half of this, though, which is quite OK I'd say.
I might add something about the GPRS service being provided by some companies also. Theoretical - 43.2 kbps (right?). Actual - a few KB every 10 minutes. No matter what phone model, location or other factors.
BTW - something is seriously wrong with the forum software, excuse me if this has been said countless times.
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According to this:
http://www.ieo.org/backbone.html
As of 10 years ago, india had a backbone bandwidth of less than 2 megabit.
And 4 years ago,
http://www.india-today.com/ctoday/20010616/master.html
325 megabit.
The problem isn't so much the ISPs as the fact that the country's got a dismaly tiny link to the rest of the world.
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I've been on holiday in northern India in February 2004.
There are Internet cafes EVERYWHERE, even in the smallest and dirtiest little villages. Most of the time hoewever, they have very old Windows 98 computers that are stuffed with viruses, worms, keyboard loggers and spyware (use a temp. e-mail account only and change your password immediately when you get home!). Most of the time, the connection speed is terribly slow, and you're busy for half an hour just to open your webmail.
However, in one place which looked just like any other shabby Internet cafe, we had a surprisingly fast connection. They had ADSL there. I don't know what the connection speed was.
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@jesperdj said:
I've been on holiday in northern India in February 2004.
There are Internet cafes EVERYWHERE, even in the smallest and dirtiest little villages. Most of the time hoewever, they have very old Windows 98 computers that are stuffed with viruses, worms, keyboard loggers and spyware
To anyone visiting India, here's a tip - always go to big chain-store type cafes only. Two of them are - Sify Iway cafes and Reliance WebWorld cafes. They are safe bets (no spyware, half-decent hardware running Win 2k), and have at least 256 kbps connections. Prices are also ok.
The smaller 'shabby' cafes usually run 10 or 12 computers on a single dial up connection shared via LAN.
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Maybe this is why so much code outsourced to India comes back as a
photocopy of a photo taken of the source code printed out with a wooden
table background instead of via email!
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@don said:
@mercurysquad said:
Product names changed when the Government redefined broadband to mean a minimum of 256 kbps line speed.
Where I come from (network design and support) "broadband" means the protocol is designed so that the signal can share the medium with other signals (oppose "baseband", where the signal expects to have the medium all to itself). So, for instance, DSL is broadband because the data signal and the voice signal share the same wire pair. It has nothing to do with speed.Awesome, good for you.
You should move to a place that acknowleges multiple common-accepted definitions for word.
What does "nitpick" mean where you come from?
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@mooney said:
You should move to a place that acknowleges multiple common-accepted definitions for word.
The definitions offered therein largely coincide with the one he originally offered.
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@mercurysquad said:
To get an idea of the prices, just divide them by ten to get a rough US dollar equivalent. Yes it's expensive also.
I'd love to know where you can buy US Dollars for Rs.10!!! It seems like there would be great opportunities for arbitrage, and I could be rich in short order.
It only seems expensive because you're using horrible conversion factors... The rules of thumb I use for approximating Indian Rupees are Rs.30 to 1 Australian Dollar and Rs.45 to 1 US Dollar. With those conversion factors, the prices compare reasonably with what they are here in Australia, where we have one half to one fiftieth the population density of similar areas in India,,,
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@merreborn said:
@mooney said:
You should move to a place that acknowleges multiple common-accepted definitions for word.
The definitions offered therein largely coincide with the one he originally offered.Of course they coincide. At no point did I suggest that his definition was not valid. However, they also coincide with the speed-related meaning.
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@mooney said:
@merreborn said:
@mooney said:
You should move to a place that acknowleges multiple common-accepted definitions for word.
The definitions offered therein largely coincide with the one he originally offered.Of course they coincide. At no point did I suggest that his definition was not valid. However, they also coincide with the speed-related meaning.
the point is the original thread was obviously refering to the non-speed related definition.
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@random_garbage said:
@mercurysquad said:
To get an idea of the prices, just divide them by ten to get a rough US dollar equivalent. Yes it's expensive also.
I'd love to know where you can buy US Dollars for Rs.10!!! It seems like there would be great opportunities for arbitrage, and I could be rich in short order.
It only seems expensive because you're using horrible conversion factors... The rules of thumb I use for approximating Indian Rupees are Rs.30 to 1 Australian Dollar and Rs.45 to 1 US Dollar. With those conversion factors, the prices compare reasonably with what they are here in Australia, where we have one half to one fiftieth the population density of similar areas in India,,,
I mentioned an "equivalent" conversion rate, which takes into account the cost of living in either of the two countries. Sorry but I'm not dumb enough to claim 1 USD = Rs 10 per se.
Average monthly per capita income in India is Rs 11,000 (about $250), which is 1/8th of the per capita income in the US. However, a person with an 11,000 income can live a life similar in quality to an American with a USD 1100 per month income.
Get me?
Lastly, I have lived in Germany myself since 2005 and I can assure you I know what broadband rates internationally are. It's not cheap in India no matter what conversion factor you use in the end.
As for the funny discussion about "definition" of broadband... come on guys.. that definition was used in the Govt of India "Broadband Policy 2004" so obviously it's not a general redefinition of the word.
