Broadband Internet In India: Welcome To The Slow Internet Lane

So last Tuesday I was suppose to write my weekly blog post and I was not really sure what should I write next, turns out that was not my biggest problem at the time. My awesome internet connection decided not to work,yet again. And then it hit me, this is a problem that we all face and this is surprising considering the fact that we are one of the largest growing countries in terms of data consumption.According to a report by COAI the total number of wireless GSM connections in India is around a mind boggling 928 million, and this is mobile data not even considering the wired broadband connections. Which brings me to the second problem with India's internet scenario.

Now till 2014 TRAI(Telecom Regulatory Authority Of India) defined any connection with a speed of 256kbps as a 'Broadband connection'. Yup, that's not a typo 256kbps it is. Well we should thank heavens that it was recently made 512kbps. OK!! really?? 512kbps, I mean sure it's better than 256 but come on its 2015. Before you guys thinks I am being unreasonable consider this,up until January of 2015 a connection with a speed of 4Mbps was the minimum standard for being qualified as broadband in the U.S.(Yup,4Mbps the same speed that we go to our rich friend's house to experience)Now FCC went ahead and did something even incredible,they were like 4Mbps is so 2014 so they made it(wait for it!!.......)
25Mbps ,yes that's right, minimum broadband speed in the U.S. is  now 25Mbps.(Now I know which dream Martin Luther King was talking about.)

Now, I don't expect Indian ISP's to go this crazy you know, I mean I don't think BSNL officials even know that these kinds of speeds exist, but we definitley deserve better. Which brings me to the next problem, the tariff plans. I mean the amount you pay and the kind of service you get is hilarious. And then we have Indian ISP's(Internet Service Provider) favorite weapon, the FUP(Fair Usage Policy). Now those who are not familiar with the term, not to worry I am here to oversimplify it for you. The FUP limit is the limit of your so called 'Unlimted Usage Plan' after which basically your internet connection is more or less like watching paint dry. The credit of this goes of course goes some of the private ISP's like airtel who came with this genius idea of ripping people off. Since then nobody(TRAI that is) cares and we are still suffering. Again you think I am being too hard on them, consider this now I use a fairly slow internet plan on which I 'supposedly' get 15Gb of high speed data @4Mbps and after that it goes down to 512kbps and for this I pay around 700 bucks. Seems fair, well its not & here is why? First of all the speed is never 4Mbps its around 2Mbps(I am looking at you Tikona)and then there is the stupid FUP limit of 15Gb that's like half a season of Game Of Thrones in Full Hd and remaining in 3gp(And its criminal to make someone watch Game of thrones in 3gp). Let us compare this with a service called 'Google Fibre' in the U.S. Now what I am about to tell you is not even a joke they offer speeds upto 1000Mbps at 70$/month that's 1Gbps(That's higher than what bharti mittal get in his office!!). Now I know what you are thinking that's 4500 a month in rupees, well the basic plan that offers you a speed of 5Mbps has a price tag of.........(Drum roll.........)......... 0$/month. Yup again its not a typo zero you only pay for one time installation(Free Internet!!, still faster than what bharti mittal gets!!).Now if this does not make people happy I don't know what will!!
 But jokes aside this is a major issue specially for a country like us with a growing economy. The whole world is online and going faster, the e-commerce is booming, every new business needs an internet presence now a days and we are still stuck at 512Kbps. TRAI and the DoT needs to take a serious look at this situation after all as someone has very rightly said and I quote:

"The Only Thing worse than NO internet is SLOW internet"  

P.S.: So it took me at least 10 clicks on the publish button to post this so yeah if anyone has a suggestion for a better ISP comment below and share.Cheers!!