Timothy Gonsalves
Telecom networks are highly technical and public review is usually cursory. Recommendations primarily come from the industry.
In broadband the metrics traditionally come from the industry and there’s a mismatch with the subscribers expectations. Regulators specify last mile access speed, the provider is concerned with the access node, but the subscriber is concerned with the speed of accessing the content server.
Under the customer driven approach we’ve defined test metrics, and tested them against three different servers, repeated at different times of day, and different days. About 200 locations have been covered.
Some interesting findings
- The advertised last mile speed may not be the real experience. Speed of downloading pages depends on the international gateway.
- Digital divide (urban/rural) does exist. Urban is often faster, and electricity is more reliable
- This new test methodology empowers to customer to ‘regulate’ broadband quality
- Inputs to the TRAI (Indian regulator) have been partly accepted
- Definition of broadband should shift away from raw last mile speed.
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