Thread: A matter of choice

Is anyone aware of an instance wherein any one subscriber in a given area has a choice of more than one ISP, and through the same medium, i.e. cable?
Most cable based ISP's have the disadvantage of being able to work with just ONE ISP at a time, thereby limiting the choice of service available to subscribers. Likewise, even for DSL based services, the entire infrastructure - i.e. from the DSLAM to the copper pair coming to your home, is owned just by ONE company - BSNL, MTNL, Airtel or Tata. Bottomline: if Tata does not have its own line going to your home, then you are not a 'feasible' subscriber.
Strangely, in the West, as well as in Pakistan, DSL providers have the option to piggyback on the telephone provider available locally - and such that the same exchange can hook up to multiple DSLAMS from multiple ISP's. So, in effect, a certain house in Karachi could use CyberNet's DSL service, while its neighbouring house could use MultiNet's DSL service - both on the copper pair owned by the public carrier - PTCL. Okay, tariffs are considerably high - but these take time to rationalise - as the subscriber base increases. But then, bottomline remains that in a situation like this - the subscriber's choice is NOT limited to what the carrier chooses for him/ her.
Therefore, what remains to be asked is this: Can a mechanism be evolved that allows a choice of multiple services over one carrier network? All said and done, phone companies can do this straightaway - by unbundling the last mile of copper pair services - and leasing out part of the spectrum to piggybacking DSL providers at a flat, regular license fee - as is done in the West. With cable, this may be a little more difficult (cost intensive) and may not be viable for cable service resellers. But then, there is no harm in experimenting.
I look forward to your views on this and how greater choice can be offered to subscribers, thereby giving more reasons to expand the broadband base.

Originally Posted by Chandoolal

Is anyone aware of an instance wherein any one subscriber in a given area has a choice of more than one ISP, and through the same medium, i.e. cable?
Most cable based ISP's have the disadvantage of being able to work with just ONE ISP at a time, thereby limiting the choice of service available to subscribers. Likewise, even for DSL based services, the entire infrastructure - i.e. from the DSLAM to the copper pair coming to your home, is owned just by ONE company - BSNL, MTNL, Airtel or Tata. Bottomline: if Tata does not have its own line going to your home, then you are not a 'feasible' subscriber.
Strangely, in the West, as well as in Pakistan, DSL providers have the option to piggyback on the telephone provider available locally - and such that the same exchange can hook up to multiple DSLAMS from multiple ISP's. So, in effect, a certain house in Karachi could use CyberNet's DSL service, while its neighbouring house could use MultiNet's DSL service - both on the copper pair owned by the public carrier - PTCL. Okay, tariffs are considerably high - but these take time to rationalise - as the subscriber base increases. But then, bottomline remains that in a situation like this - the subscriber's choice is NOT limited to what the carrier chooses for him/ her.
Therefore, what remains to be asked is this: Can a mechanism be evolved that allows a choice of multiple services over one carrier network? All said and done, phone companies can do this straightaway - by unbundling the last mile of copper pair services - and leasing out part of the spectrum to piggybacking DSL providers at a flat, regular license fee - as is done in the West. With cable, this may be a little more difficult (cost intensive) and may not be viable for cable service resellers. But then, there is no harm in experimenting.
I look forward to your views on this and how greater choice can be offered to subscribers, thereby giving more reasons to expand the broadband base.

well said
I even called a few people to ask if this is true and all the people i spoke to say this is true there is only one cable isp in thier area
But once this direct competition starts the prices will come down steeply
and considering that if you have cable isp's services available in your area and you still have the choice of getting adsl connection or a gprs connection ,this is the only reason the prices have now become a bit affordable these days and let this go on ,God willing we in India will have access to the cheapest broadband connections in the world but as for now in India internet access is costlier then the developed countries and the incomes considerably low as compared to the deeloped countries but this is not going to sustain , the prices are bound to come down its just a matter of the sarkari babu's moving thier lazy ass and changing lisencing policies.

Originally Posted by Admin

well said
I even called a few people to ask if this is true and all the people i spoke to say this is true there is only one cable isp in thier area
But once this direct competition starts the prices will come down steeply
and considering that if you have cable isp's services available in your area and you still have the choice of getting adsl connection or a gprs connection ,this is the only reason the prices have now become a bit affordable these days and let this go on ,God willing we in India will have access to the cheapest broadband connections in the world but as for now in India internet access is costlier then the developed countries and the incomes considerably low as compared to the deeloped countries but this is not going to sustain , the prices are bound to come down its just a matter of the sarkari babu's moving thier lazy ass and changing lisencing policies.

I quite doubt it has much to do with sarkari babus - in fact, from what you see on ISPAI's site, there is no dearth of category 'A' ISP's - its the category 'B' and 'C' ones that you don't see much... Yes, one place where I'd blame them SQUARELY is the wastage of the surplus bandwidth on the INSAT platform.

On the other hand, it may have much to do with the international side bandwidth pricing that seems to be terribly skewed against South Asia in general....most of our cat 'A' ISP's seem to be using SingTel as their gateway (Bharati/ Airtel is one of their dedicated users). Also, India has not been providing adequate routing/ hosting/ mirroring services (both in terms of qiuality as well as quantity) as compared to countries in the world where retail broadband is cheaper. Therefore, as far as bandwidth economics are concerned, India is essentially a 'taker', not a 'giver' - as in giver of access paths and data traffic routes. Therefore, ISP's are NOT in a position to trade international hosting traffic for retail access traffic.

Even as far as the (now) six STM1 FLAG cables are concerned, ISP's and lessors are giving greater importance to VoIP in order to keep our call centre ops running. Yes, SAARC nations (including Pakistan) use spur lines from our FLAG networks (a fact that was greatly rued recently when the spur link went down due to physical damage by a trawler) - but what can you charge an already impoverished economy in terms of hard cash for plain simple usage rights, with no value added?

Back to the babus. Curiously, TRAI has been harping on the issue of BSNL 'unwrapping' or 'unbundling' its last mile copper pair for use by third party private DSL providers.....in 2003, way before DataOne was launched, a pilot, also called DataOne, and also formulated by BSNL was proposed for a limited deployment in parts of Bangalore. For all we know, this would have worked - but then came in Reliance, who managed to make a fool of BSNL by bypassing their international switching circuits, and routing international calls at domestic rates. The Hon. Supreme Court had to intervene, and Reliance was made to cough up the amount it had conned. It is only after this incident that successive Chairmen of BSNL have decided to opt against unbundling.

All these are only on papers, but considering on last two years Internet pricing has come down drastically, now as per new TRAi ruling C class is going to be vanished all the small ISP will either close down or upgrade there license...

The prices in India are way higher than the west. In US I used to pay $79 for unlimited cable TV + unlimited high speed internet+ unlimited phone, for a month. That is way less than what we pay here for limited phone + limited cable + limited internet. The government needs to allow multi nationals to come and do business here. They will bring the price down.