Economic catalyst; broadband - a must in every Sri Lankan household

Sanath Siriwardena

The year 2010 would be remarkable to many countries in the world when it comes to IT. 2010 became the symbolic year and all have set their targets and announced goals at the beginning of this millennium. Recently President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced our national goal in IT, and that is to increase the IT literacy of the country to 60 per cent by the year of 2010. The task is challenging but could be achieved comfortably if we could adopt the right strategy at the right time.

Human beings are inspired by the nature of this technology. Therefore people would get attracted much easily to the IT industry and this tendency is very promising to the future of the industry. The demand for IT in Sri Lanka looks healthy and promising. The day is not too far for a computer to become a household appliance like the television set in Sri Lankan society.

There is a remarkable demand for computers in Sri Lanka. Import of used computers has created a competitive market followed by a drastic fall in prices. This displays the tendency of the computer market and how fast the price of a computer falls as the new technology emerges.

If we go back to the good old days, when personal computers were first introduced to the country, the Internet was not as popular as today. Thus people did not see much benefit to their daily lives by having a computer. Home computers or rather personal computers were not widely available except the computers that were used in banks and offices.

Typing a letter, playing a video game, watching a movie using a compact disk were the best things one could do using a computer in the past. Yet, very few of them used computers for commercial purposes such as legal work, graphic designing and stock keeping in the domestic environment.

Significant

However, these domestic tasks performed by people using computers did not offer significant benefits to the society or to the economy of this country in the process of developing. Soon these conditions were changed as Internet emerged in the country in the mid ’90s. People started to explore the world with their fingertips using the information super highway. Personal computers at home became a vital device and millions of computers connected to each other using a widespread network called the Internet.

Like the first generation of computers with low processing power CPUs, in the good old days the Internet data transfer speeds were inadequate to support much of the multimedia content usually found on the Internet.

This telephone wire based dial up service which was running at 56Kbps was soon replaced by the advent broadband Internet in 2003. As the computer technology grew, the number of applications and the work load also increased. Like we need fast computers to get things done quickly and efficiently, we need fast Internet connections to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. The bandwidth has widened to facilitate the unrestricted flow of data through the Internet connection fore and aft.

These high bandwidth Internet connections are known as broadband and frequently used to transfer large amounts of data among computers at very high speeds.

However the quality of Internet services in Sri Lanka is very disappointing. Though we roll along with the modern computers and with fast changing platforms we have failed to cater to the nation with fast Internet services to suit the speed of new computers and applications. Highly priced-low performance broadband Internet services are common and now it has become the norm.

Since the country has no State-backed mechanism to evaluate the quality of broadband being provided it is more likely the operators have developed their own standard highly concentrating only on the profits.

Not only the public but also the entire country as well as the economy are in great danger of losing the remunerations due to the malaises in broadband. Therefore the Governments in other countries have accessed the telecommunication sector not only to promote broadband but also to regulate it in the public interest.

The mass scale broadband rollout throughout the country backed by the Government is what we need immediately. Similarly, to motivate the public to use broadband widely, the obstacles and restrictions preventing users from accessing and using the Internet must be removed.

Standards

Majority of broadband services in the country have failed to reach its standards either by the quality or by the price. Surprisingly, institutes in the country have not taken any interest to reduce the price of ADSL for the past five years.

The degree of seriousness of maintaining a static price for more than five years could become visible only if we compare the broadband Internet prices with other countries. The State institutes in other countries have moved swiftly in to the broadband market whereby assuring maximum benefits to its users.

This Government-intervention led prices to fall further allowing more and more people to get connected to the Internet. Unfortunately, due to our negligence we have missed this opportunity. As a result, citizens in our country continue to use partial broadband services by paying more money to operators annually.

The seriousness of this situation would not only limit to the colossal amount of money we pay for the service providers, the malefic impact of this on the economy in the country would be more serious than we ever imagine. But this could be averted effectively if the Government identified the significance of high speed Internet like other countries in the world have.

Interestingly, the other operators in the world have taken all measures they could periodically to increase the bandwidth they provide to their customers. As a result, residential Internet subscribers in many parts of the world are provided with speeds above 3Mbps whereas we are limited to 512Kbps in Sri Lanka.

In Japan, residential customers are provided with state of the art high speed broadband connection at the speed of 100Mbps. We never ask for 100Mbps Internet in Sri Lanka, but at least 1 per cent of what Japanese citizens would get must be provided to all Sri Lankans in the future. This world tendency is reflecting the importance of providing a high speed Internet in the residential environment.

The next disturbing thing is the quality we find in residential broadband services. If one has to use broadband Internet during peak hours the length of the task he or she might embark would increase beyond tolerable time limit entirely jeopardising the concept of broadband.

Shockingly when competition grows, some of the wireless HSPA operators boldly advertise speeds that they never are capable of providing.

Underutilised

The word ‘high speed’ was wrongfully adjoined with broadband to describe the nominal broadband services for the purpose of advertising. These conditions have adversely affected on the growth of broadband and eventually country’s economy would have to pay the price.

The large amount of communication resources in this country is utterly wasted due to underutilised broadband services.

The large sum of money drawn out of the country to import modern telecommunication equipment and apparatus would be a burden on the subscribers.

In additions to all these, there are some other factors that have prevented the user from accessing the Internet. Service coverage issues are frequently heard especially in the suburbs.

Provider will never take much interest to deploy and develop broadband infrastructure facilities in rural areas with low density population. When technical problems arise where provider is compelled to invest money to overcome the issue, they would never consider deploying the broadband if they don’t see a good ROI (Return On Investment). But what happens to the citizens who live there? The problem is not limited to remote areas.

Today the people living in greater Colombo areas are also affected. Especially the telephone exchanges with extended loop lengths have prevented subscribers from obtaining ADSL for the past five years.

This is a very common issue and incorporated with broadband all over the world. But in other countries, the State mechanism acts as an arbitrator to solve this type of issues assuring citizens will get to the information super high way timely.

Regulatory

However, broadband competition in the country alone is insignificant to offer much to the growth of the Internet. Regulatory vacuum have created an oligopoly condition among broadband operators and this would encourage operators to deliver highly priced substandard Internet to its users.

The price, quality and the bandwidth were never on the agenda when developing Internet or taken for discussion by the authorities. Thousands of subscribers in the country are in a frantic situation today due to numerous problems found in broadband Internet.

We have come to the juncture where State assistance and guidance would be the driver which will carry us on the road ahead of us.

In this context the Government and other relevant institutes should not underestimate the huge contribution which the domestic broadband subscriber is capable of offering to the country’s economy if they had been added to the country’s mainstream by providing high speed Internet.

Therefore it is the duty of the Government authorities to identify the importance of providing high speed Internet facility to domestic environment and also to rectify the issues that the subscribers are facing.

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