Setting minimum broadband speed not possible: Rajan Mathews

NEW DELHI: Consumers may continue to clamour for faster, buffering-free experience while watching their favourite web series, but are unlikely to get any assurance on it even if they pay more.The government is unable to change the current rule for mobile broadband, delivering up to 512 Kbps speeds, because, telecom companies and experts say, setting a minimum speed isn’t possible technically, not just in India but anywhere in the world.“In a point to multi-point mobile network, no network operator, in India or globally, can guarantee a certain minimum download speed,” said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, which represents all carriers including Vodafone-Idea, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.The actual network speed that the consumer experiences depends on various factors such as coverage, network load, usage, location of user in the cell, application being used and the kind of device being used among other factors, Mathews explained.Third-party speed-testing agencies such as Opensignal and Ookla agree with telcos and say that guaranteed data speeds remain a persistent issue among telcos, in India and overseas.“No operator has managed to provide LTE (4G) connections to users 100% of the time, even in the most mature mobile markets. This alone means it's near-impossible to guarantee network speeds," said Opensignal chief executive Brendan Gill, attributing the findings to its data measuring 4G availability and speeds.Many other issues such as latency and quality of smartphones play a critical role in mobile user experience, especially as video streaming, online gaming, live messaging and video calling become more popular.But consumers feel telcos aren't delivering their promised Internet speeds, let alone a bare minimum level of speed.“They can do (provide a basic minimum speed), but they don’t want to. When there’s load on a system or number of subscribers are more, the speeds are low and vice versa. That should not be the case — we want constant speeds, 24x7, because we’re paying for it as per the telco’s plans,” said Arun Kumar, head of a Delhi-based consumer advocacy group.Ookla’s speed testing data showed mobile Internet speeds in India to have increased by more than 20% in 2019 from a year earlier to 10.71 Mbps, but it fell in the speed rankings — to 121 from 112 — as other countries saw a faster increase in their speeds.

from Economic Times http://bit.ly/2XcX85r