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Sci Tech
Usage pattern, not duration, important
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An average home user would download 0.5GB of data a month considering an activity factor of two hours and burst factor of 0.1. Home user would pay around Rs 1000 a month if billing is based on usage pattern.
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THE ADAGE `knowledge is power' may no longer hold good. Enter the information packed Internet and the new mantra `accessing knowledge' will now differentiate between the haves and have-nots. Dial up connectivity with its poor speed of not more than 30 kilobits per second (Kbps) was the only recourse for the home user to access this information. Direct Internet Access System (DIAS), a technology developed by Chennai based Banyan Networks Pvt Ltd is now poised to make slow connectivity speed a thing of the past.
DIAS with a 128 kbps speed may revolutionise the way people use Internet. Yet, acceptance of this new technology according to senior officials of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is not very encouraging especially by the low usage customers. The reasons are not difficult to trace. A flat rate of Rs1800 per month has discouraged many of these customers from going in for it. The only solace is the decision by BSNL to reduce the cost of entry by going in for lower charges in the near future.
A critical analysis would reveal that the cost to the customer could be slashed to nearly half. According to Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor of Electrical Engineering Department, IIT, Madras, cost to the customer should be calculated based on usage pattern. In effect this means that the concept of charging a customer should be changed from speed to volume of data accessed by a customer.
"We can do this either by charging the customer based on the amount of time spent using the Net or on the volume of data accessed by the customer," said Mr. K.V. Nair, Chief Operating Officer of Banyan Networks. "But charging the customer based on time the Net is used works against the `always on' mode of DIAS. This leaves us with only one option — that of using the volume of data accessed by the customer as a practical parameter."
The Internet industry has traditionally charged based on the duration of usage and not volume of data downloaded. "This is basically because dial up connection offers low speed connectivity in the last mile. So the volume of data that one can down load within a certain period is limited," Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Professor of Electrical Engineering Department, IIT, Madras said. This is not the case with DIAS as it offers 128 kbps and an average customer may not use its full capacity always. Moreover, since connectivity is always on it does make sense to charge based on volume.
Internet usage in India is by default asymmetric — the data flowing towards the customer (download) is huge in comparison to the data sent by the customer (upload). The ratio of download to upload is 4:1. The distinction between upload and download came into being when data transfer was through satellites. Here there was a possibility to quantify the two-way traffic. This distinction has become redundant with fibre optics coming into the picture.
In reality the maximum bandwidth capacity utilization is seen for 12 hours a day. Calculating for a month the traffic would work out to 162 Gbytes on a 1Mbps link (for average full capacity utilisation of 12 hours a day). The cost of bandwidth is dropping and is presently hovering around Rs1 lakh plus per month for 1 Mbps traffic volume. This works out to Rs 617 per Gbyte (GB). It would be cheaper if the usage were considered to be more than 12 hours a day.
An average home user is quite unlikely to use the net for two hours every day for a month. This despite the fact that DIAS gives him an `always on' kind of connection. The duration of Net usage is typically called the activity factor. Incidentally, even when using the net for two hours, a customer never uses Internet to send or receive data continuously.
For instance, when used for e-mailing the Internet is used only when the customer is either sending or receiving a mail. A little more of Internet is used while browsing. This is not the case when the Net is used for downloading music or large files. In essence the Net is practically used only for small periods of time even when a person uses the Internet facility.
In other words the Net usage is `bursty' and a burst factor defines how bursty the usage is. Burst factor is in the order of 0.01 when used for e-mailing and could go up to 0.1 when used for browsing. Internet bandwidth usage is largely determined by these two parameters.
In the case of DIAS with 128 kbps connectivity speed (it drops to 64 when the Net and telephone are used simultaneously) the data downloaded in a month by a home user is in the order of 0.5GB (considering an activity factor of two hours and burst factor of 0.1).
As the amount for downloading 1 GB data works out to Rs 617 per month, the bill to the customer is around Rs 310 per month. This has been arrived at by considering that all the traffic is bound outside the country with virtually no traffic within. It would turn out to be cheaper if domestic traffic is also considered to arrive at the final cost.
It is said that nearly 20 per cent of Internet traffic is domestic. For instance, a customer using Indian ISP's site or accessing an Indian site with its server based in India ends up as domestic traffic. Since there is no system in place to monitor this it is difficult to say with surety the traffic pattern.
Thus the bandwidth cost when actual volume of usage is considered is negligible. Add to this other costs like the cost of DIAS instrument and profit to the service provider, the per month charge for DIAS facility should not exceed Rs 1000. Of course the average number of hours the Net is used and the type of data downloaded (burst factor) need to be closely monitored for future pricing. "Increased usage by customer may increase the cost to the service provider. But it will be cancelled as the bandwidth cost is moving south," Mr. Nair said.
"We have suggested to BSNL a flat rate and then on actual usage pattern of the customer," he said. For the low end customer a flat rate for 0.5 GB of data downloaded a month has been proposed. This is expected to bring down the entry barrier and help many people avail the technology. And the net result would be a win-win situation for both the customers and BSNL.
R. Prasad
in Chennai
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