Minimum broadband speed to be raised to 2 Mbps

In line with the objective of 'Broadband for All' by 2022, the government plans to soon revise the minimum speed of a broadband connection to over 2 Mbps immediately and then upwards to 5Mbps.

Currently, the minimum broadband speed stands at 512 Kbps.

The Department of Telecommunications will shortly come out with a revised policy for the same, a senior official from the department told DNA Money.

"Keeping in mind, the targets set in the new digital communications policy, there is an urgent need to come out with the new policy guidelines for revision in the minimum broadband speed of an internet connection," the official said.

The last revision was done in 2011, when the minimum speed was revised to 512 Kbps from 256 Kbps. A revision has been pending for long, the proposal was mooted earlier as well, but did not see the light of the day.

The policy decision will be given a final stamp of approval by Telecom Commission, the highest policy making body of Department of Telecommunications.

According to a report by internet performance testing company Ookla last month, India saw the biggest improvement in fixed broadband speed among the world's most populous countries. India rose two spots on mobile broadband to 111th fastest and remained at 65th in broadband. With an average fixed download speed of 23.00 Mbps, the country improved by an impressive 50.4%. On the mobile side, India ranked at the bottom of the list showing a 15.2% increase in average download speeds overall.

In an interview with DNA Money, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said, "We need a lot of infrastructure upgradation, before we can give the desired access, desired speed and desired quality of services. India is one of the countries where data growth is the highest in the world, not just because of the size of the country, but per capita. We must not underestimate the hunger for rural data because this is their way of integrating with the mainstream and this will also bridge the infrastructure divide, income divide and the opportunity divide."

The DoT is constantly in dialogue with the telecom service providers to get them to improve their networks, she said. There are issues in quality, data connectivity, but the good thing is that with the proliferation of WiFi hotspots, the quality of services will definitely see an improvement because right now there is huge congestion in networks, she said.

The new policy announced by the telecom department envisages $100 billion investment in telecom sector by 2022, broadband connectivity at 50 Mbps speed to every citizen and providing telecom connectivity across the country besides creation of 4 million jobs.

The broadband through fibre and access through WiFi hotspots is the way forward as the data consumption on mobile has hit the roof with the entry of Reliance Jio into the sector.

The data hungry market of India got its wings with the launch of services by new player Reliance Jio back in September 2016. Since then, data volumes on a mobile network has multiplied many fold, forcing the telecom players and even the government to look towards the way of satiating people with other means to access data services apart from the smartphone.

The government has also set a target to reach 10 million WiFi hotspots by 2022.WiFi hotspots will also be critical to the telecom industry as well as government's plan of extending the internet to rural hinterlands. This will serve a dual purpose – enable telecom players to offload traffic data from their networks and bring rural people on the internet. With over 1 billion mobile users, only around 500 million are connected through mobile broadband internet.

Public Wifi hotspots and broadband through fibre is the way forward as mobile networks face congestion issues with rapidly growing data traffic. Videos streaming over various applications including YouTube, Netflix have been the main driver behind ever increasing data consumption in India.

BLINK OF EYE

• In line with the objective of 'Broadband for All' by 2022, the speed would be raised to 2 Mbps immediately and then to 5 Mbps
   
• The last revision was done in 2011, when the minimum speed was revised to 512 Kbps from 256 Kbps.