Bhopal Notes :: 63 :: Internet in Bhopal at snails' pace

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I was having problems with Facebook but then I realized that the speed with which internet was being delivered to us in Bhopal (Idgah Hills) was very slow. On an average it was around 8mbps whereas the average for India was a little more than 18. I complained against the slow speed on 1504. I didn’t get any satisfactory answer. The woman at the other end was incompetence personified. She asked me from which state was I speaking from when at the very outset I had given her my number with the STD code telling her I was speaking from Bhopal.

I carried out an ookla speed test and found the speed of dixed broadband was hovering around 8mbps. Obviously we are getting a speed that is far slower than what the rest of India with a speed of aroun18 was getting. On my complaint somebody from the BSNL rang up to inquire whether the speed had improved. I told him it had not and obviously he also knew it. Perhaps he cannot do anything about it as the servers have aged or are overloaded. My Ookla test plainly said “change server” and it gave BSNL only one star out of five. Incidentally 8 or thereabouts is the speed for mobile internet in India. For fixed broadband services it is worse than snails’ pace. One can imagine the gap in service when one finds that in fixed broadband services Singapore tops with a speed of more than 150mbps.

It seems what we get as fixed broadband is an apology for it. I wonder how business and industrial establishments cope with this kind of slow speed.