Brace Yourself For Slower Data Speeds

Consumers of mobile and home broadband services may soon have to brace for sharp slowdowns in data speeds, dropped video calls or heavy x as India Inc asks staff to increasingly work from home to contain the spread of Covid-19. Experts and analysts say existing telecoms infrastructure belonging to Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio Infocomm may be ill-equipped to handle any sudden countrywide upsurge in home internet consumption, given the continuing spectrum crunch, low fiberisation levels and poor wired broadband penetration.

Time, they said, had come for the government to allocate fresh spectrum resources, create more WiFi hotspots and enable fast-track fibre rollouts on a war footing to grapple with a likely jump in India Inc’s home internet consumption, especially if the pandemic lasts for several months. Latest data put out by the telecom regulator pegs the average monthly wireless data usage per user at 10.37 GB, which analysts say could rise by around 15% in the next two quarters if people continue to work from their homes over a prolonged period.

TV Ramachandran, president of Broadband India Forum, said that quality of telecom services is bound to suffer as telcos don’t have the requisite spectrum resources, nor is there adequate fiber on the ground to manage a sharp jump in home internet consumption in a prolonged pandemic. The government, he said, must “quickly incentivise fibre rollouts and allocate fresh spectrum resources, ideally airwaves in the E and V bands that are increasingly being deployed by telcos globally to cost-effectively meet mobile broadband backhaul needs”.

Telcos conceded there could be a sharp jump in home internet consumption amid the ongoing pandemic, and were setting in motion plans to manage network congestion more effectively by closely monitoring the emerging voice and data traffic consumption patterns.

A Bharti Airtel spokesman though downplayed the expected pressure on its network, saying it has “sufficient capacity to provide bandwidth-on-demand to our retail and enterprise customers”. At press time, Vodafone Idea and Jio did not reply to ET’s queries.

Rajan Mathews, director general of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said telcos are expediting steps to optimise traffic load management and beef up network capacities.―Business Telegraph