Evolution of connectivity in India

First of all, let me apprise you of the provocation for writing this article. A new unlimited internet connection has been activated at my place. My joy knows no bounds, today!! I think it's the best gift a techie can ever receive !!

So, India, indeed, has come a long way in providing internet connectivity to the common man. You can say that my family has been quite progressive in terms of technology, if not at the forefront. We were never able to afford things ahead of their time, but have mostly benefited every time some technology has just started to become commonplace. And so has been the case with net connectivity, as we have charted the progress over the past 11 years..

The story begins in 1997 when we first got the Internet connection. It was a 100 hour pack, purchase from then VSNL. The connection: 56 kbps dial-up. A new connection or purchase of the pack required a visit to VSNL's downtown office, something very, very far from the suburbs where I used to live. 100 hours might seem like a joke today. But, in those days, we used Outlook Express to check mail and there were only a handful of sites to be visited anyway. Remember, I am speaking of the days when there was no Orkut, Facebook, YouTube, etc, etc.... Those 100 hours used to be consumed thriftily, trying to prolong the renewal as far possible.

Another killer was that we had to pay uptime charges to the telephone operator
, for using the landline. The charges levied were the same as you being on a regular phone-call for that long !! So, using net meant having to pay VSNL, as well as the telecom company.

There's a certain patch after this that I don't remember. However, when we shifted back to Kandivli, we got ourselves a post-paid MTNL dial-up connection. It cost less than the setup at Vasai, but it was still time-metered. Then, under a new scheme, we bought a new landline number, one that offered unlimited Internet, ofcourse at 56 kbps. This setup continued for about....2 years, if I'm not mistaken.

The next wave of the true New India, hit us with the introduction of 256 kbps ADSL connection by MTNL. The old 24-hour line was disconnected, and replaced with an ADSL connection on the same line used for making regular telephone calls. An old single-port router was replaced by a new 4-port ethernet router, when we subscribed to IPTV service. This was the realisation of the full Triple-Play service envisioned by the telecom authorities.

Later on, the 256 Kbps connection was upgraded to a theoretical 2 Mbps connection; a move made by MTNL at no extra cost to the subscriber. It provided a realistic speed of 0.9 Mbps, and was quite satisfactory.

Then, tragedy struck. MTNL was continuing with its sloppy attitude towards customer management. The QoS of IPTV never stabilised to a point where it could be classified as acceptable. Frustrated, we replaced the service with the completely reliable TataSky, and have found no reason to complain in the 2 months that we have been using it.

Now see an important point here. Technologically, it is such that the IPTV service rides on top of a broadband connection. So, all IPTV users must be broadband users of the same service provider. However, now with the IPTV service gone, broadband was no longer a compulsion.

One Sunday (04-May-2008, precisely), I happened to read a newspaper insert by Hathway - a local cable-internet service provider. On offer was an unlimited 256 Kbps connection, at the price of a 1 GB connection offered by MTNL. No reason to switch? May be. But MTNL had fallen back on its promise of 2 Mbps. The connection speed had been down to about 240 Kbps in the past month. And there were growing concerns being voiced publicly that MTNL was unable to upgrade and expand its network as it waited endlessly for its chartered equipment supplier to deliver the new machines. The time was ripe, the opportunity was irresistible.

I decided to take the jump. The connection has changed from 256 kbps 1GB limit to 256 kbps unlimited. Those in advanced countries might not appreciate the speed; but what is of essence here is that its an unmetered connection ! Now I can actually get those podcasts, the iPlayer news, movies and all the media I ever wanted, but only window-shopped till today!

I'm really happy I made the change. I look forward to Hathway to provide a reliable service and live up to my expectations....