Private Isps Fail To Measure Up

Even after one year of opening up the Internet service provider market to private players, the much-expected "quality service" remains elusive to Net users in India. The situation is all the more grim in Andhra Pradesh where Internet usage is growing rapidly.

Probably, this accounts for large queues seen outside the Department of Telecom, the public sector tele-provider, here when it slashed Internet charges earlier this month.

"I have decided to return to the DoT fold after having tried three private ISPs. I feel in our system, the public sector remains the best bet," says a local journalist who, after being initially a Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd subscriber, changed over to three private ISPs and returned to DoT, thus giving greater credibility to the public sector

 

Out of a total of 270 ISP licences sanctioned by the government, 62 have started operations, of which 10 began operating from Andhra. There are four Category A and six Category B licenced private ISPs. There are an estimated 60,000 Net connections in AP.

But so far as the quality of service is concerned, all the ISPs vie with each other in poor quality. While the ISPs worldwide are able to deliver new Internet Protocol-based services, like packetised voice, video, virtual private networks and multicast, the Net users here have to face problems right from getting connected to the dead slow downloads.

Most private ISPs blame most of the problems on the DoT and VSNL's poor infrastructure and their reluctance to lose monopoly.

"While the VSNL at Hyderabad has got only 6 to 8 mega bytes per second (Mbps) bandwidth allocated to it, it has allotted 2 Mbps each for at least six private ISPs," says N Satish Kumar, executive director, Southern Online Services, a Category B service provider.

"Though our customers use leased lines from their end to the DoT exchange, the minute they enter the router of VSNL, they have to share its 8 Mbps bandwidth with all the users and the path becomes congested," says Satish.

The private ISPs are only concentrating on increasing their subscriber base and revenues, not in improving their infrastructure, quips J Ramanujam, chief general manager, DoT AP circle. "If you have a 1,000 customer base, you should at least have 100 telephone lines for connectivity and some of these ISPs do not maintain this 1:10 ratio, thus affecting the download speeds," says Ramanujam.

VSNL does not want to share the pie with private ISPs, alleges Venkat Meenavalli of Applogic Systems.

The company is ready to launch its own wireless Internet connectivity. "However, when we initially tried for satellite connectivity from Intelisat, VSNL bought the entire bandwidth from that satellite just to prevent us from becoming the first wireless service provider," said Venkat. The company later took on lease at 6 mega hertz connectivity from another satellite of Intelisat.

Though we pay Rs 25 to 45 lakh for a 2 Mdb bandwidth, what we get in return from VSNL is too little. Sometimes we don't even get a 1 Mb space, says Bhaskar Reddy of Pioneer On Line, a Category B service provider.

Both VSNL and DoT are delaying approvals and other paperwork related to commissioning of gateways, said he.

There is no competition between the DoT and private ISPs and hence, there does not arise the question of hampering their progress, said J Balakrishna, general manager, south of the Hyderabad Telecommunications.

"While the Internet services are bread and butter for the private ISPs, they are only a supplementary for DoT, so we need not bother much about Internet activity," is his reply to criticism from private ISPs.

There are approximately 15,000 Internet subscribers for DoT in the state, thus making it the largest ISP in the state.

Balakrishna makes a counter allegation saying some ISPs are misutilising the bandwidth allocated to them. However, he does not elaborate on this.

He also does not even seem to spare VSNL in criticising it for its unpreparedness in enhancing the bandwidth before the Internet revolution.