From 512 Kbps to 64 Kbps.
By Dileep Thekkethil
A letter written by Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel to the telecom regulator TRAI requesting to bring down the minimum broadband speed from 512 Kbps to 64 Kbps has surfaced online, eliciting a strong reaction from internet users in India.
According to the letter, the operator wants the minimum speed of broadband connection in India to be reduced from 512 Kbps to 64 Kbps once the user reaches the broadband quota.
As of now, TRAI has set 512 Kbps as the minimum speed for the broadband connection.
If TRAI heeds to the request of Airtel, after using the monthly quota of broadband, the user will be automatically downgraded to the speed similar to a dial-up connection, literally forcing them back to the era of slow internet connection.
In response to TRAI’s Draft Direction on Delivering Broadband Services in a Transparent Manner, Airtel wrote “In case of fair usage plans, the subscriber remains a broadband subscriber till the expiry of his assigned quota. Beyond the assigned quota, it cannot be the prerogative of the customer to keep on accessing data at the defined broadband speed. Hence, a service provider should be free to throttle the speed to 64kbps after the expiry of assigned data limit to the customer.”
The company has also raised questions of fair usage of broadband speed as some customers, Airtel says, misuse the speed and use more data than usual.
“In fact, it has been observed that some customers misuse the minimum broadband speed provision and tend to overuse the data limit in their quota. Thus, the cost increases for all customers due to higher usage at 512 kbps. As a result, we are forced to keep the price at a higher threshold for every customer. Therefore, if broadband has to become affordable in the country, ideally, the Authority should not mandate any broadband speed after exhaustion of quota. However, if the Authority wants to fix a speed limit is after the expiry of quota, it may be fixed at 64kbps,” it added.
The telecom giant also appeals in the letter that no agency should put forward a ruling to provide a minimum speed for broadband as they can provide speed only for a fixed quota for which the subscriber has signed up to. By adopting this, Airtel believes that users will turn off their broadband after use.
“Giving pop up alerts on every login after data usage crosses the quota limit of 80 percent may result into consistent irritant for customers and lead to spike in customers’ complaints due to inconvenience. Further, most of the fixed broadband customers are accessing Broadband services over Wi-Fi mode (always on connections) and the connection is being shared amongst many users/ devices. Hence, it is submitted that only an alert requirement may be provided through SMS or e-mail in case of 80 percent limit,” Airtel responded to the issue of alerting users on consuming 80 percent of available data.
Interestingly, the letter written by Airtel asking to bring down the minimum broadband speed comes at a time when the TRAI is reportedly considering to boost the minimum bandwidth of the broadband connection to 1Mbps.
Twitter Rections
Airtel has suggested TRAI to reduce post-FUP speed to 64kbps because we're misusing all the 512kbps we get. pic.twitter.com/adV9HTP2QR
— Monty (@bibhasdn) February 15, 2016
Airtel wants minimum broadband speeds revised to 64kbps, my suggestion why don't you guys just quit this business instead of whining #airtel
— Ranjit (@geekyranjit) February 15, 2016
6 Comments
Customers should propose to Trai to remove the concept of FUP. In countries like US, a 2 MBPS connection means 2 MBPS, you can use it 24 x 7. Who is Airtel to decide what is “Fair” usage? If they are selling a 2 MBPS connection, even if I use it at full speed 24 x 7, how is that unfair usage?
We want the govt. 1) to change the definition of broadband to 2 Mbps immediately. The service providers should be penalized if the contracted speed is not provided at the customer door till FUP. we cannot accept 80% speed and this type of ifs and buts should not find a place in the terms and conditions. 2) Every service provider must furnish the details of data used in each session and every day by default. 3) The unused FUP in any month must be carry forwarded to the next month provided customer renews the service.
This way both the customer and service providers will not loose.
hey guys its the time to leave airtel and go for any other isp. let airtel use their 64kbps speed at their own offices and houses we donot need airtel 64kbps shitttttyyyy!!!!!!!!!! speed.
F**** you Airtel.
Guys just takeout your airtel sim from phone and throw it away..
FU airtel 512 is throughp4t gives dwnload speed of 65 kbps n u wnt to dwn throughput to 64 means dwnload speed will b aprox 20 kbps like 2g???? nt enough sufficient fr surfing
It seems Airtel wants to take us back to the days of Dial-up-Internet. So much for Digital India. I really hope TRAI quashes this unreasonable and silly proposal. The world is moving towards Gigabit Internet and here we are…… 64Kbps. Shame on you Airtel.
If Airtel proposal is to be considered by Trai then as a customer i don’t want guaranteed speed but i want the actual speed that i took my connection. Majority of the cases, the speed that is guaranteed falls below the speed which we subscribed now a days with Airtel. And also airtel is going to refund the amount to users who haven’t exhausted the limit which is reset after the billing period so Airtel is getting advantage of Unused data. Also Airtel has to ensure that they provide the real time log of data used from time to time in the month as i found Airtel is cheating customers and tries to bully with government with these kind of things. Recently my Airtel 4G dongle data have crossed 4.5 GB for accessing mails in 4 days and total size of mails that were received by outlook were close to 152 MB.