The following are the guidelines to be followed by the ISPs as per trai on urgent basis: -
1. Provide adequate information to subscribers regarding Internet/broadband services being offered and marketed as a good business practice. 2. Provide information regarding contention ratios (number of users competing for the same bandwidth) adopted for different services by service providers in their tariff plans submitted to TRAI, manual of practice, call centers and on their websites." 3. Publish contention ratio for different Internet/broadband services on their website quarterly to facilitate subscribers to take informed decision. 4. Ensure availability of minimum required bandwidth in their network according to maximum contention ratio suggested by TRAI for different services based on number of subscribers. Since guidelines are recommendations, and in this case, it means there aren't any deadlines to meet by the ISPs to start adhering to these guidelines. Moreover, it is mentioned in the guidelines issuance notification that "any regulatory burden in present economic environment of Internet sector may increase the cost of service provisioning and will adversely impact the growth of broadband. The Authority prefers least regulatory intervention while providing greater flexibility to service providers to ensure better quality of service to internet/broadband subscribers." Therefore, subscribers cannot expect ISPs to be in a hurry to enlighten subscribers with the nitty-gritty of why they cannot be assured better broadband services. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
