The Hindu : Karnataka / Mysore News : BSNL launches broadband service in Mysore

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 10, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Mysore

BSNL launches broadband service in Mysore

By Our Staff Correspondent

MYSORE, FEB. 9. Six customers in Mysore city's Siddharthanagar and Vishweshwaranagar telephone exchanges were linked to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.'s (BSNL) much-touted broadband Internet service on Monday, marking a new era in high-speed Internet connectivity.

Mysore Telecom District's General Manager, T.K. Chandrashekar, told The Hindu that BSNL will be ready to provide broadband Internet connections to another 20 to 25 customers in the two exchanges within the next week.

256 kbps speed

The broadband Internet connection, DataOne, comes at a minimum browsing speed of 256 kbps (kilo bytes per second) and is billed as the ideal option for bandwidth-hungry Internet surfers. Broadband Internet connection is 17.5 times faster than dial-up connections.

Sidharthanagar and Vishweshwarnagar telephone exchanges in the city are the first two exchanges chosen by the Mysore Telecom District for launching its broadband service. The remaining 13 telephone exchanges in the city will be broadband enabled by April if the required equipment arrives by February end, Mr. Chandrashekar said.

"We already have more than 2,000 pending applications for broadband connections from BSNL subscribers in different parts of the city," the General Manager of Mysore Telecom District said. It may be mentioned here that there are an estimated 5,000 Internet users in the city who subscribe to different packages of BSNL's Internet connections — Caller Line Identification (CLI) subscribers, dial-up subscribers, and leased line subscribers. "At least 2,000 existing BSNL Internet subscriber may opt for broadband in the next few months," Mr. Chandrashekar said.

Poor connectivity

Coinciding with the launch of broadband service in Mysore, dial-up subscribers of BSNL's Internet service experienced poor connectivity in the last two days.

The bandwidth, which slimmed on Tuesday, was reduced to a trickle on Wednesday morning before transmission of data was virtually blocked by Wednesday afternoon.

Only after several Internet users called up BSNL's help desk was the service restored by Wednesday evening. Mr. Chandrashekar attributed the poor rate of transmission to a "technical problem in the server". The same had been set right, he said.

The poor transmission on the dial-up Internet service, coming a few weeks before broadband facilities are made available in the entire city, forced many subscribers to wonder whether BSNL was encouraging existing dial-up subscribers to opt for broadband in large numbers. Mr. Chandrashekar, however, said that the launch of broadband service in the city had little to do with poor transmission on the dial-up service.

Mysore is one of the 15 cities in Karnataka and 200 cities across India identified by BSNL to launch broadband service. BSNL will also be the only service provider in Mysore to provide broadband connectivity across the entire city. Though private service providers such as Airtel and Sify are already offering broadband service in the city, their reach is restricted to certain areas that are commercially viable.

Home users can subscribe to the broadband service with a minimum download speed of 256 kbps at Rs. 500 a month without security deposit. Presently, the speed offered by most dial-up services does not breach the 56 kbps mark. Broadband allows the use of the telephone and Internet at the same time.

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