NEW DELHI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will soon release a consultation paper on minimum Internet speed offered by telecom operators. “If a company is claiming that they have a minimum or average Internet speed, then people should know what it is. At present, they are unwilling to tell their minimum speed. We are going to publish a report on this very soon and give our recommendation,” R S Sharma, chairman of TRAI, said.
He added that the use of wireless technology in India is the prime reason for slow Internet speed. “You can’t have a very fast Internet service coming from wireless technology. India requires more of fibre network to increase bandwidth delivery and better Internet speed,” Sharma said.
There has been reports that the government is likely to increase the speed requirement to 2 Mbps from the current 512 Kbps for Internet services to be classified as broadband. The announcement for this is expected to be made at the end of this month.
TRAI had earlier recommended changing the definition of broadband in the present context. According to global Internet testing firm Ookla’s recent Speedtest Global Index, India ranked 67th in fixed broadband speed and 109th for mobile Internet speeds. Another report by OpenSignal said that 4G download speed in India is the slowest across 88 countries.
Not just the Internet speed, India is also plagued by the call drop issue for quite some time. Sharma said they will publish a report on the public domain after analysing responses on the show cause notice sent to operators who failed to meet the new service quality norms for the December quarter.Under the new rules, telecom operators may face a maximum penalty of `10 lakh for call drops, which will now be measured at mobile tower level instead of the telecom circle level.
No phone calls during flight?
As per reports, the Department of Telecom (DoT) might not go ahead with TRAI’s proposal on allowing mobile services onboard aircraft. A DoT standing committee, which evaluated the proposal, has said it is advisable to permit only Internet as in-flight connectivity in the Indian airspace at this stage.