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Believe it or not, the tech-savvy former J&K CM Omar Abdullah has actually downgraded his net connection from optical fibre to anc­ient dial-up. The reason: poor connectivity and qual­ity of service. “There are such wonderful advertisements on 4G and that you can get connected even on mountain-tops and so on. Really? It’s not even available in Jammu and Srinagar,” he complains. Stressing that quantity has been given more importance than quality of internet in India, he stresses, “We certainly envy those who have faster int­ernet speeds. There is no option but to live with this problem.”

Not too far away, in download heaven Gurgaon—the city boasts of some of the fastest internet speeds in the country—IT professional Joydeep Chaudhury finds it next to impossible to access internet on his mobile while on the move. The speeds are pathetic, the line is inconsistent and a proper connection almost always difficult to get. The story is similar for the connection at home, an 8 mbps Airtel wireline one. Three years ago, when he took the connection, it worked fine. In the past two years, there has been a huge degradation of the services.

Call drops is yesterday’s story. For over 300 million Indians who regularly hook up to the internet for work or pleasure, for music or movies, or simply to spend time on WhatsApp, Facebook or Skype, internet in India is a big, splitting headache. Speeds are extremely slow and connections inconsistent, irregular and mostly unreliable. In many places, there is no connection and, like call-drops, int­ernet connections disappear without any warning and for no reason. Yet, most consumers pay heavy bills. Worse, the billing is opaque with few able to understand how they have been billed and what they are actually paying for. Despite full-page advertisements and prominent TV slots luring consumers, the users have mostly been left in the lurch with slow, unr­eliable connect.

Across the country, in metros and in tier-2 and -3 cities, the situation is the same across service providers despite all the tall claims made by telcos of lightening internet speeds. India ranks an abysmal 91 among 131 countries on mobile internet connectivity. In smaller town and rural areas, where internet is required to keep in touch, the connection is often far worse. Despite paying heavily and taking the best connections, Indians are being taken for a ride in the name of fast internet. Most people, especially the young and mobile, want to use data but are scared of running up huge bills. No one knows how much a video would consume and operators have not made it easy for them.Says comedian Neeti Palta, “I use a Vodafone connection for my mobile and frankly I feel like all I am paying for is to see the number three and the letter G on my phone instead of actually using an internet connection. I thought that shifting from Airtel to Vodafone would help me get better signals, as well as a better deal but all I am doing is figuring out how much of my int­ernet is left at the end of the month and how much I am being fleeced for.”

That’s a sentiment not a few would identify with. When 3G came a few years ago, Indians thought that would imp­rove their lives with faster speeds. But even after three years, 3G speeds have left much to be desired. Worse, 3G coverage is extremely poor within cities and inconsistent. Ask singer Mohit Chauhan, who complains that he is unable to get a clear and robust line on his internet dongle. “As a musician I like listening to a lot of music on the net but the speed is so slow that I usually give up in the middle,” he says, and streaming video with this speed is out of question. He runs out of his data limit very fast, and then the speed often drops further.

In India, 3G is not true broadband bec­ause though broadband by definition is 256 kbps minimum, 3G often cannot give even this throughput and manages only around 128 kbps in most cases, though most companies promise 2 mbps. This falls tremendously short as 256 kbps as a definition of minimum broadband speed was relevant five years ago. In today’s context it should be minimum 2 mbps.

There is a lot of hope (and hype) around 4G. Reliance Jio, for one, has been threatening to launch and revolutionise services through high-speed internet for a while now. As of now 4G services from other operators like Airtel are performing well but even here, consumer complaints of high billing and data time running out remain.

So will 4G save the plot and give some reprieve to internet-hungry Indians? Not many are convinced. Warns former minister of state for telecommunications and Congress leader Sachin Pilot, “Unless you define what 4G tangibly means, unl­ess TRAI and authorities are able to pinpoint the quality that is desirable in 4G, it might end up more a marketing gimmick than actual service.”

 Fact is, despite 4G coming, the bulk of Indians are likely to remain in 2G and 3G for their internet needs on the mobile. In India, unlike in the US or Europe, internet is mostly accessed on mobile phones—of 350 million internet users, an overwhelming 330 million access it on their mobiles. Only 20 million have fixed-line internet and that number is falling. The problem is also that although there are over 150 internet service providers (ISPs) on paper, 85 per cent traffic is controlled by 10-15 ISPs, most of whom are telecom service providers that provide mobile internet.

The most common complaint—data limits, no matter how large, run out in a flash and companies do not provide a plausible explanation. Ask telecom and internet expert Mahesh Uppal, whose 50 GB 4G connection runs out in weeks without any particular heavy usage. He has no clue how this happens. Millions like him face a similar predicament where data limit runs out in days without any heavy usage. And there seems to be no one who can solve this mystery.

Clearly, there is huge consumer angst at being ripped off by companies without being given the promised mobile internet services. This is in sharp contrast to what is available in other countries like the US or in Europe where internet works with lightning speed, and is robust and reliable. Author Ira Trivedi, for instance, has changed her connection thrice to get a good service but in vain. “I have changed three connections in the past few years,” she says. “I started with Airtel, which caused so many problems that I had to shift to MTNL. MTNL made me run to their office even for the smallest of problems. Now I use Vodafone, which is marginally better but for erratic speed. Even my 3G connection is extremely tricky and I feel they overcharge me quite often.”

Who is to blame for this sorry state of affairs? Obviously, the lion’s share goes to telecom service providers that deliver internet connectivity to the netizens of India. Rather than investing in infrastructure or improving what they have on offer, these telcos have constantly ducked beh­ind the excuse of scarce spectrum. Although the government is making spectrum available, they argue, it is priced too high. This leaves companies with little money to expand or improve services. Not many buy this argument though.

 Telecom companies in India are putting far too many users per megahertz of spectrum than in other countries. This could be the single biggest factor behind speeds being much less than what is desired or promised. Says internet expert Prasanto K. Roy, “There is a 10x difference between India and Singapore in number of subscribers, with India having many more subscribers per mhz of spectrum. India has about 105-110 million broadband users with minimum speeds of 256-512 kbps, who use very slow speed connections. Three out of every four internet users in India use mob­ile internet, which is seriously challenged in terms of spectrum.”

Most experts point out that internet on mobile can never give high speeds or the kind of service a fixed-line provides. In most of the internet-developed countries, it is the fixed line which gives the bulk of the internet and all that is high speed. In the US, for instance, over 60 per cent internet comes through fixed lines. In Europe and other countries like Singapore and Korea (the world’s best internet service), you find a predominance of fixed lines connected to fibre optics.

In India it is just the opposite. The existing fixed-line infrastructure is also not cap­able of giving high-speed internet as it is mostly in copper and has very poor maintenance. Needless to say, the telecom companies did not invest in fixed line bec­ause they did not see any future here and invested only in wireless mobile services.

As is well known, mobile internet is dep­endent on scarce spectrum, on which there is far too much pressure in India than in other countries. In most countries, there are three to five service providers among whom the spectrum is divided. In India, there are 12 fighting for almost the same amount of spectrum that is available in other countries. Says Subho Ray, president, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), “On mobile phones, there is an overload as there are far too many subscribers than a company can handle. 3G is not available uniformly across operators and so the experience of internet is scattered. Once you have more clients, spectrum gets choked and internet gets slow. And since spectrum is limited, it will continue to be like this.”

The government’s regulations on broadband and internet speeds are also to blame. Says Pilot, “In India there is no gold standard for what the minimum speed for internet should be. The definition of what broadband should be is also not clear. The customer often gets duped in the middle of the 2G-3G-4G confusion, and there are no parameters or government standards to judge the authenticity of the claims of what the internet speed actually is.”

Obviously, the government and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have much to answer for as there is no proper regulation looking at internet speeds and service. The existing regulations are very old. “The quality of service and conditions governing internet in India were laid down over a decade ago in 2002-03. TRAI needs to look at that afresh,” says Amitabh Singhal, former NIXI president and dir­ector, Telexcess. “There is more demand today and quality of service is more important. Con­sumers today are suffering from not just poor quality of connections but also poor regulation. TRAI’s quality of service reports are merely reproductions of reports submitted by service providers.”

TRAI, however, says that it has been looking into the issue and has suggested alternate ways of internet acc­ess. Says TRAI chairman R.S. Sharma, “Twice we have made recommendations for allowing cable TV internet and asked the government to resolve the revenue issues.” (See interview)

As expected, service providers put the blame squarely on the government and spectrum shortage. Says Rajan Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), “Speeds are correlated to the width of the highway and the number of users on that highway. In India operators have much less spectrum than what is available globally. Operators here have 15 megahertz of spectrum per operator while internationally it is 45-50 mhz per operator. At the operator level, we want to maximise the number of users as the government wants to connect everybody. The National Broadband Plan calls for connecting everyone  and that  forces operators to put more users on the network.”

Experts feel the ope­rators have not done their job properly and have not invested in infrastructure or looked at customer needs. “In India, the broadband players have not been particularly consumer friendly,” says Comfirst director Mahesh Uppal. “They have wanted to maximize their revenue. The quality of network is uneven and there are patches of poor connectivity. The lack of transparency at the operator end is a worrying issue. Most operators do not offer sufficient transparency in tariff and billing.”

What is surprising is that till recently, telecom and internet users had no place to complain about their misery. Says consumer lawyer Jehangir Gai, “There are few cases as people do not want to litigate because of the time and expenses involved. But, on top of that Justice Markandey Katju had ruled that telecom complaints are not maintainable under the Consumer Protection Act.” This means that but for local consumer forums, whose judgments may not be binding, users had nowhere to go with their telecom and internet complaints. Thankfully, a November 2015 judgment has reversed this and such complaints can now go to court.

Of course, India is a complicated, price-sensitive market. Empirical evidence shows that people tend to choose the cheapest plan, which is not necessarily the best quality nor provides the best speeds, especially on mobiles. So they do not get the best of speeds. Moreover, most of the content accessed in India is hosted outside the country and there is a lack of proper international interconnect with servers overseas. In fact, about 60 per cent of India’s traffic is on international servers and that is affecting speed in a big way. It goes without saying that locally hosted content will improve speeds.

Whatever the reason, the Indian consumer is unhappy, deeply so. “It’s high time we addressed the issue,” warns Omar. As India seeks to clamber on the digital superhighway, the Modi government must work quickly to have a true-blue download nation.

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And What Can You Do About It

What are the consumers’ main complaints with mobile internet services?

Speeds are extremely slow, connections are inconsistent, data limits get exhausted quickly and bills are high.

Why is mobile internet so slow?

Shorn of jargon, let’s put it like this: there are too many subscribers per megahertz of spectrum, which makes the connections slow. Telcos do not invest in infrastructure.

Why does the download limit run out?

That is a big mystery in 2G and 3G. In 4G though, a superior quality feed eats up more data count, resulting in download limits finishing fast. To make matters worse, the billing is opaque.

What about pricing?

Internet prices in India are among the cheapest in the world. One can get a connection for as low as Rs 250.

Why is even 3G so slow?

Theoretically, 3G should give relatively faster connection on mobile. But 3G coverage is scanty across cities, resulting in dropping speeds. There is also the issue of towers being taken off.

Will 4G change things?

Perhaps initially, but when the number of subscribers increase, it will be the same old story. Also, 4G is expensive & old phones will not be able to access.

But ads for 4G promise the moon...

That’s advertising. Airtel and Vodafone have launched 4G and Reliance Jio is expected to disrupt the market with inexpensive services. Of course, we will only know after it is launched.

Who is batting for the consumer?

Unfortunately, no one! Until November 2015, telecom complaints were not all­owed in courts. Even now few people know about the change.

By  Arindam Mukherjee with Bureau Reports