You can imagine my surprise when I see a New York Times writer saying that fixed phones in America are becoming ornamental objects. It’s not that they are rooting out the copper lines or fiber; but that it does not make sense to have phones that are fixed to walls (except in baseball dugouts and places such as that).

The seed-strewn dugouts of baseball stadiums around the country may very well end up the final bastions of corded communication in this wireless era.

While landlines in homes collect dust and serve increasingly decorative functions, the attitude among baseball clubs is a familiar one in a sport tied tightly to old-fashioned ways: why change what works?

Everyone talks about being more customer-centric these days. And the incentive for focusing on customers is growing in part because customers are becoming more empowered by technology than ever – even when it comes to things like guaranteeing broadband connectivity levels.

Evidence: a new tool from university researchers in the US that allows people to see the bandwidth being consumed by all the devices on their home network – and to find out if they’re getting the broadband Internet speeds they were promised by their ISP.

The tool, called Kermit, was developed at Georgia Tech University with support from Intel, Microsoft and the National Science Foundation, and helps customers diagnose apparent slowdowns in Internet speeds by identifying likely congestion bottlenecks inside and outside the home network (to include things like ISPs shaping and throttling traffic).

With the intention of raising awareness among broadband subscribers, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has issued a set of guidelines for broadband service providers. In this context TRCSL has directed all broadband operators in the country to make available the broadband Internet related information to the public in a dedicated web portal contained in the operator’s main website.

The decision to desist from imposing strict performance standards, and instead to focus on making customers aware of what they are getting is commendable. Again, the new Director General has shown a maturity not exhibited by his predecessor. We have not analyzed the guidelines in detail (we work in 12 countries, not only Sri Lanka; and broadband QOS is not the only thing we work on). While thanking the reader who brought the matter to our notice, we hereby request others to join in the discussion.

To get the discussion started, here is what I wrote on QoS regulation in the context of the Budget Telecom Network Model in a report to the OECD last year:

5.5 Quality-of-service regulation
In the same way that one cannot expect silver tea service on RyanAir, one cannot expect premium service from budget telecom networks. All operators are likely to offer sub-optimal quality because of the need to squeeze as much traffic as possible into the network. Strict and aggressive QOS regulation is inimical to the model. However, it is also naïve to expect competition to prevent the operators from letting QOS fall to unacceptable levels. Therefore, gentle supervision of QOS, focusing primarily on publishing QOS performance against benchmarks and ensuring that barriers to unhappy customers switching suppliers are kept low, would be the most appropriate.

As neither we nor most of our readers do not have access to the thread it was posted, we like to continue the discussion here.

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Hi people,

I come from one of the ten largest economies in the world, with nearly 200 million people, 8.5 million km2, and 5.564 municipalities, where 94% of the people do *not* have access to any form of broadband – the “B” in the famous BRIC acronym.

I am just coming out of the IGF workshop “Expanding broadband access for a global Internet economy: development dimensions”. I left the workshop a bit shocked with the concepts expressed, not by the AT&T representative (who not surprisingly said AT&T subdsidiaries countries other than the USA should be considered local companies because they employ local people), who as usual is just doing his job in defending the so-called “market”, but by other speeches which seemed to completely ignore that, in most of our contries, there is a de facto monopoly or cartel situation regarding the telco infrastructure, and that public policy ought to centrally take this into account if the aim is to universalize broadband access with quality to all families.

One of the speakers (from LIRNEasia) said that “lower prices require lower costs” and therefore one should just “phase out universal access levies and rationalize taxes”. I retorted that pricing per Mb/s of ADSL broadband in São Paulo might be 65 times higher than the same price charged by the same company in London — and therefore no amount of levies or taxes would justify such scandalous pricing difference, not to speak of the much lower QoS.

I suggested that, instead of eliminating the universal service funds (whose levies are a very small portion of price composition of broadband), we should insist on reforming policy regarding the use of these funds. The reply I heard was that it makes no sense to keep funds that are not used or are squandered (!!). Impact of the fund’s levy in Brazil is just 1% of the price of the fixed line telephone connection — its impact in the price of broadband (a separate bill even if the service is not unbundled) is zero.

There was also a recommendation that we should be “gentle on QoS” to facilitate things regarding universalization of access — fascinating. Again, examples abound in which telcos guarantee only 10% of the nominal contracted rate, and in practice this might be even less. Should we just agree with absurds like this in the name of “it is better to have something than nothing”???

And then there is the crucial question of unbundling, central to the policy debate in the developed countries as it directly impacts universalization through an effective reduction of prices for the final user. It is a major challenge for broadband public policy in developing countries, where regulators are usually in the hands of the telco cartels. The word was not mentioned (not a single time) by anyone in the panel, as if irrelevant to the development dimensions of broadband.

The speaker also mentioned that the “need” to reduce costs for the big telcos would require reduction of international bandwidth costs. One of the two big carriers in Brazil, a Brazilian conglomerate, owns redundant fiber running from Brazil to Miami in rings passing through countries in the Caribbean and Central America. They own their own international link, in summary. So do the other carrier in the de facto duopoly — a major operator from Europe. This does not make any difference in pricing for the final user, although it does contribute to their profits in Brazil being far higher than in Europe for example.

Finally, the fascination with mobile. Of course the AT&T speaker started his talk by waving a fancy iPhone to the audience — mostly natural for a commercial wireless giant. But the infoDev representative and others mentioned mobile as a “solution” for the poor, and not even bothered to separate the discussion in the two main topics here: first, the mobile phone as a connectivity device to enable the user to fully use the Internet through a friendly human-machine interface, be it a common PC or special equipment for people with disabilities; second, the phone itself as *the* alternative to the full user experience that a PC or similar might provide. It seems the agency bureaucrats are satisfied with having two castes of users: a small minority of the ones who can fully use the Internet as it evolves requiring more and more multimedia capabilities on both sides (server and client), and the ones relegated to a small device on which it is barely possible to type small messages.

In the first regional LA&C preparatory meeting for the IGF, in 2008, a representative of a major telco said we should not worry about bringing the next billion to the Internet — they have cell phones, so they are connected already, problem solved. I wonder if this executive would take the place of a carpenter looking for a job, who has to compose and send by email his CV together with images of letters of recommendation to his would-be employer, and had nothing but a cell phone (smart or not) to do it. Not to speak of comparing the executive’s thin-fingered hands of a pianist with the big callous hands of the carpenter.

fraternal regards

–c.a.

What did we learn?

1. Broadband users in Colombo should not complain. They do have excellent choices. In terms of actual speed they are better off than counterparts in Dhaka, Chennai and New Delhi. Hold on, there is a hitch. They rarely get what is being promised; operators seem to over promise and under deliver.
2. Indian operators, as seen from test results from Chennai and New Delhi, while not promising sun and moon, deliver what they do and sometimes even more. That is what we call ‘Ethical Advertising’. Indian Telecom Regulator’s intervention can hardly be overlooked. In January 2008 Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) directed the operators to specify the minimum speeds and to keep that promise. Looks like it is working.
3. Dhaka: Prices seems to have dropped but so does the quality. So after all it is not such great news.

That is not all, there is an interesting piece of information useful for any mobile broadband user in Colombo, but we leave the readers to find it themselves. The full report is here.

However, many regulators do not perform their functions satisfactorily.   To take consumer protection functions, can anyone name a significant intervention by the TRC?  The last I recall is the publication of comparative fixed-line QOS data in early 2003.

Interestingly, the blogsphere, especially the subset of Sinhala bloggers, is emerging as a force in protecting consumers interests.  They are the first to spot changes in terms of service offerings and as seen from a recent post by Kanabona, they also probe behind various claims made in ads. LIRNEasia spotted this trend early and is working hard to develop tools that will make regulation by the crowd more effective.

It can’t be easy for the operators now:  inept regulators with real power that can be (and is) exercised arbitrarily; analysts who pounce on every little thing and whose views may move markets; and now bloggers!

The CEO of a Pakistan ISP, Mr Wahaj us Siraj, said that the situation in Pakistan was very different, with plenty of capacity available on the undersea cables and low contention ratios (1:4) being used. Prices of international capacity had come down radically in recent times, he said, and now amount to only around 25 per cent of costs. I responded that we need to start testing in Pakistan soon, because this further illustrates the value of the AshokaTissa methodology, which allows the diagnosis of where problems exist which may vary from location to location. He was followed by Mr Undugodage, who was the driving force behind the introduction of ADSL to Sri Lanka, who said that they tried to give customers service equivalent to BT, using contention ratios of 1:15. This contrasted with the speaker from BSNL who blurted out that the standard contention ratio in his company was 1:20.

How is it that there can be so much variation in key parameter affecting the customer experience in three countries?

The slides that I used are here.

This event, designed for South Asia’s top telecommunication players interested in building and managing a business-focused telecommunciations organization, is intended to provide an important platform for information exchange through dialogue between serious players in the region. The event will feature keynotes, thought-leadership presentations, interactive discussion panels and real-world case studies on ‘hot topics’ pertinent to the South Asian industry.

Rohan will make a presentation entitled, ‘Introducing broadband: investment conditions, regulatory challenges and addressing QoS’ at a session entitled, ‘Exploiting technologies for future growth and development’.  Rohan will also be among panelists at a discussion on ‘Leveraging on next generation technologies to extend the service offering’.

Other notable speakers at the event include Mehboob Chowdhury, Chairman of the South Asian GSM Forum, Bangladesh, and Ricardo Tavares, Senior Vice President – Public Policy, GSM Association, USA.

An on-line version of the full program is available here.

Comcast, a leading US ISP, has just announced caps on downloads.  If this is the future for rich country users, can there be any doubt about what the future for BOP users in poor countries?

This may require changes in LIRNEasia’s (and Singapore’s) efforts to improve broadband quality of service experience through benchmark regulation or otherwise, using as one of the measures, Round Trip Time to the Internet cloud, defined as first point of landing in the US.  An alternative will not be easy to come by, but we have faith in the wisdom of the many.   Please contribute.

LIRNEasia saw BTRC’s move to issue three new Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) licenses a positive development, as Bangladesh is certainly not a country that can boast of quality and affordable broadband.

This is what we learnt from our research:

Exceptionally high cost of broadband remains a key barrier that prevents the development of the BPO industry in Bangladesh. This is apparent when the prices are compared with similar packages offered by the operators in neighbouring countries. The annual cost of the basic office broadband package offered by Grameen Cybernet Ltd is USD 8,016. This is more than thirty times when compared with the equivalent in India (and 67 times that of EU average). These prices indicate a serious mismatch between demand and supply. So opening the market for broadband services is commendable, but the true impact will be felt only if this results in significant drop in prices.

We are glad to find our trademark in multiple places in the RFP document, specifically in following imrpovements (from the earlier one):

1. Operators should now guarantee QoS not just in last mile, but at least till the first foreign entry point, by purchasing adequate international bandwidth. (Earlier the focus was only on last mile.)

2. Contention ratios and download/upload speed ratios are defined, ensuring capacity increase parallel to the number of subscribers

3. Connectivity need not be confined to WiMax (except in Dhaka and Chittagong Metropolitan area). Operators have the flexibility in using other media (eg Fiber or Copper wires) in conjunction

4. Operators have to ensure QoS as per BTRC guidelines. There will be regular monitoring. (Glad to learn that BTRC will an eye on broadband QoSE! Not many regulators have!)

5. Operators now have a better understanding on backbone/backhaul design. The system can be point-to-multipoint or mesh radio systems consisting of BWA distribution hub stations and their associated subscriber stations (or BWA access devices).

Our complete response is here.

With this, is it too much to expect the same reaction from Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Sri Lanka too for our response on the ‘Planning and Implementation of a National Backbone Network (NBN)’?

To an ordinary observer the image on left looks like some monkeys but to Nuwan Waidyanatha that is his complex Early Warning System. Monkeys act as sensors and detectors of hazards (aka a leopard) to deer – who would take immediate action for mass evacuation.

Again the image on top right look likes a damper to any engineering student, but to Nuwan that is mass evacuation. The figure below might explain it better with the blue line representing a quick but rough evacuation and the red line a smoother one.

What does this figure has to do with Broadband QoS? If the zero line is assumed to be the accepted level, this explains the change in QoS with the growth of markets. Initially it is the best with less number of subscribers sharing the pool of resources, but expansion of customer base lowers QoS, which has to be increased by building more infrastructure. Red line is the ideal, but blue is what happens in real world (that is assuming we finally settle down where we want). This is what I have learnt from Nuwan and thinking of applying in my own reserach. 

Nuwan’s yesterday presentation directed at finding a framework for Early Warning Systems was an eye opener and there was enough everyone else could learn and apply. His slide set is available here. A gentle warning. Don’t bother opening it if you hate Maths.

Broadband QoSE testing is generating interest. A news report on ‘Times of India’ yesterday  (April  7) suggested the site www.speedtest.net to determine connection speed. This site, like many such others available on web, lets a user to ping to a selected server to check the throughput. (See above – A Sri Lankan user pings to a server in Hong Kong, one of the few available options)

This is fine as long as only the bigger picture will do, but as found in early stages of our research, it gives no clue about the point of bottleneck. Neither has it measured other metrics than the throughput which can be important depending upon the application.

The difference in AshokaTissa methodology proposed by LIRNEasia and IIT Madras is that it covers not only more metrics than an ordinary speed test, but also create a more detailed picture. We think that would be something more interest to ‘Times of India’ readers.

At a well attended public seminar yesterday (March 18) at Institution of Engineers (Sri Lanka), LIRNEasia released its Broadband QoSE testing methodology (named ‘AshokaTissa’, after the greatest collaboration between India and Sri Lanka, the movement of Buddhism across the Palk Strait) and the preliminary test results of three of the most widely used broadband packages in Sri Lanka, SLT Office (2 Mbps / 512 kbps), SLT Home (512 kbps / 128 kbps) and Dialog (2 Mbps / 512 kbps) This was followed by the responses from SLT and Dialog Broadband. The event was jointly organised by LIRNEasia and Institution of Engineers. (Sri Lanka)

Speeches/Presentations available for downloading:

Comments from the Chair – Rohan Samarajiva

Introduction to broadband and Test Methodology – Timothy Gonsalves

Preliminary QoSE test results – Chanuka Wattegama

For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games.

Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.

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