The government is preparing to fix the minimum speed of broadband connection at 512 kilobytes per second (kbps) through the broadband policy, which is in the pipeline. This means a customer having broadband internet should not be provided speed less than that from its service provider.
As the government has neither defined broadband nor specified what the download and upload speeds have to be, internet service providers have the liberty of providing service by defining broadband speed on their own.
Currently, the policy is under consideration at the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC).
According to Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), the policy will define broadband by identifying the minimum speed in kbps — downlink and uplink— to guarantee the quality of service.
Once the policy is implemented, service providers claiming to provide broadband service must give minimum download speed of 512 kbps to an individual subscriber from their point of presence (POP) of the service provider.
The draft of the policy was prepared by NTA hired IT expert Manohar Bhattarai. NTA officials said that the draft policy, which is also the revision of the draft prepared about five years ago, has envisioned expanding optical fibre backbone to all 75 districts, increasing the penetration of broadband connection and making it more affordable.
Even as there is no official data, the broadband connection rate is expected to have reached 10 per cent of the population.
“The policy is basically based on targets set by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, a joint initiative of International Telecommunication Union and UNESCO,” said Bhattarai. He also said that the country failed to come up with a plan on increasing broadband connection due to lack of political will and seriousness from the government, which resulted in making the broadband connection charge dearer.
The commission has set four clear targets for making broadband policy universal and for boosting affordability by 2015.
The set targets include all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy, 40 per cent of households in developing countries to have internet access and internet penetration should reach 60 per cent worldwide (50 per cent in developing countries and 15 per cent in least developed countries).
The policy is considered as the key for development of broadband infrastructure, high speed data connectivity, and implementation of e-governance by expanding broadband internet service.
As per the previous draft of the policy, the broadband, irrespective of the access technology used, is always ‘on internet’ connection with minimum upload and download speeds of 128 Kbps and 256 Kbps, respectively.
And, these speeds shall not be on a shared basis, and the service provider should guarantee these minimum speeds to qualify as a broadband service provider.
India too, three months ago, had increased its minimum speed of broadband from 256 kbps to 512 kbps. The 256 kbps speed was based on India’s broadband policy unveiled in 2004. The southern neighbour has defined broadband as ‘a data connection that is able to support interactive services including internet access and minimum download speed of 512 kbps to an individual subscriber from the POP of the service provider intending to provide broadband service’.
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Quelle/Source: The Himalayan Times, 29.10.2014
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