August 2009

Monthly Archive

August 5, 2009

TRAI says minimum broadband speed is 256 KBPS but does Bharti DSL understand it as 2.56 Kbps?

Posted by Vasudevan Deepak Kumar under Humor, Social Concern
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TRAI says minimum broadband speed is 256 KBPS but does Bharti DSL understand it as 2.56 Kbps?

According the TRAI, the regulator authority of communications services in India, a broadband connectivity is defined as follows:

“An ‘always-on’ data connection that is able to support interactive services including Internet access and has the capability of the minimum download speed of 256 kilo bits per second (kbps) to an individual subscriber from the Point Of Presence (POP) of the service provider intending to provide Broadband service where multiple such individual Broadband connections are aggregated and the subscriber is able to access these interactive services including the Internet through this POP. The interactive services will exclude any services for which a separate licence is specifically required, for example, real-time voice transmission, except to the extent that it is presently permitted under ISP licence with Internet Telephony.”

However, at least this week when I use my Airtel Broadband and check against the various Internet Speed Testing websites, it is a ghastly shock to witness pathetic and snail-speed internet. The fastest homepage (Google) takes four seconds to load on a typical business day with Airtel Broadband (Chennai).

Not sure if some business development manager in Airtel who has signed the license agreements with TRAI for ISP business misintrepreted the 256 KBPS requirement as 2.56 KBPS. I have also raised this as a doubt to Airtel Broadband as an escalation note. Let us see if they are really serious about the quality of service and what reply they give.

 

August 2, 2009

Hostile Hi. What prevents one to politely excuse back with an amicable bye!

Posted by Vasudevan Deepak Kumar under Humor, Social Concern
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Hostile Hi. What prevents one to politely excuse back with an amicable bye!
 
This is a little followup of my previous post “How would you treat people who just hop back at you only when they need something for themselves?“. Today afternoon I had to confront one such creature near my workplace. I never had any affinity to ‘it’. And no sooner did I sit in my workstation this sniffed near me with a cunningly curious and a prank-tainted pleasant ‘hi’.
 
Since I have been following a simple logic of not to entertain such creatures I just to chose to ignore it. I would like to comment on its attitude and (mis)deamenour it was demonstrating by showing all sorts of long faces because describing it would mean feeding the troll and encouraging them. Let us uphold the spirit of ‘Do not feed the trolls’. The basic idea of this post is to serve as a guideline/eyeopener for other people to be wary of such creatures around them.
 
And similarly when it comes to prank calls and unsolicited telemarketing calls, I don’t think one should be too much carried over by them. We have a lot of ways to tackle them elegantly:
 
  1. Reverse Telemarketing 
  2. Mission Hilarity
  3. Infinite Sink

    (We may need request services like (1) and (3) to our respective cellular operators in getting those implemented)

  4. Or simply, as we have discussed above, when the telemarketer says ‘Hi’, you reply ‘Bye’. [Tit for Tat]