In India the ISP scene is pretty confusing at the best of times. On one side, users are screaming for better services and more bandwidth. On the other hand, many ISPs, are busy pointing fingers at each other (actually mostly at VSNL) for things not working.

             Last year, we had to dial several times before we were able to connect to the Internet. This time around, ISPs have become smarter. All of them have installed more phone lines and access ports. So, We get connected fast enough. But after that, we have to wait for a long time, we are not only paying the ISP's but as now we are paying for the telephone calls as one waits.

           With broadband taking its first steps in the country, there is enough confusion about what to expect. User complaints are already mounting, ranging from having to wait for weeks for a connection to be given, to poor quality of services given by ISP's.

           If you try to find out about a broadband connection, you will be inundated with options for different technologies and discourses on the difference between Kbps with a capital k and without a capital k and with or without a capital b, and God knows what else. But, how will you know whether you are getting broadband or not?

          Unfortunately, most of us are just paying for cheaper access, and not for the broadband experience. How do you ensure that you get what you are promised? No amount of calls to help desks or consumer courts or editorials in magazines will make that happen. The problem is not that there is not enough infrastructure. The problem is plain old bandwidth. There is not enough international bandwidth being purchased. You may dig up the whole country and put fiber in, but that will not get you anywhere if you do not have all the content sitting on this side of the pacific, or if you do not have fat pipes connecting to the rest of the world.

        And those pipes will not happen till someone invests good money. That investment will not happen unless there is good money to be made out of it. Now that is a catch-22 situation if there ever was one. So, what a customer can do for this? should he suffer with the poor service? What an ISP should do to improve its customer satisfaction at the cost of  low returns? All this in the commencing article..

Krishnabhanu.V