Thread: What do you care - High availability or High Speed?

People,
With the Continually bettering broadband speeds and infrastructure, where does the priority/need for "high speed" and "high availability" lie on the scale?
Do we have to compromise one for the other or do we have to compromise with our pockets? But the million dollar question is does common mass actually require "high availability"? For instance, My local cable provider ( Beam Telecom ) provides me 2Mbps unlimited at 1000 Rs/month ( and 256Kbps unlimited at 400 ), which is better than any provider I know of ( No fair usage or 'k'rap like that ) . The service may not be the best"est", but again I have no complaints, except for minor glitches or down times. This does my job, saves time and money, in which I can only get 1/4th of the speed from Airtel. No offense Airtel, I envy your reliable service and may be you cater to the corporate needs better, but where do you leave people like me, who wants speed but a little flexible concerning availability and willing to save some bucks ? - Looking for alternatives ?

In my humble opinion, we should encourage the small players and bring them to a level comparable to big players like Airtel/Reliance/Tata, and leave them no options but to improve the service. We should make sure monopoly doesn't prevail, so that the costs won't rise to the skies, leaving the middle/poor class just be able to dream of broadband or internet for that matter. I am looking forward for India to have "National broadband plans", in near future, just like any other developed countries do, which can spread awareness among the population.

I voted Both 1 & 2.

Both Speed and availability are cool

I don't care about ISP as long as it gives good service.

I guess I was wrong about the fair usage limit. Apparently, Beam cable also has a cap of 25 GB on our 2Mbps plan. Speed is cut down to 768 Kbps until 1st of the next month.

Does uploading also add up to the 25 GB limit? I was uploading heavily to P2P network. Does anyone know?

Originally Posted by naveennelluri

I guess I was wrong about the fair usage limit. Apparently, Beam cable also has a cap of 25 GB on our 2Mbps plan. Speed is cut down to 768 Kbps until 1st of the next month.

Does uploading also add up to the 25 GB limit? I was uploading heavily to P2P network. Does anyone know?

I got an SMS from the beam cable saying that the speed will be cut down to 768 Kbps as I crossed 25 GB limit. But still we are getting 2Mbps speed and when I looked in website for the fair usage policy, it didn't say that the FUP applies to my package. So It must be a software error, sending the wrong SMS.

Does beam broadband have services in punjab

Currently, no. I don't think so. Seems they have plans to extend to different cities in future. Google for Beam Telecom for more info.

Originally Posted by naveennelluri

I am looking forward for India to have "National broadband plans", in near future, just like any other developed countries do, which can spread awareness among the population.

India has had a National Broadband Plan since 2004. There is supposed to be 20 million broadband subscribers by year-end 2010, but they've barely hit 10 million now, so... unfortunately might not happen.

There are a number of things that need to change both on the government side and on the side of private players for Indian Broadband to "come up" to a decent standard.