New Delhi, Dec. 10 (PTI): A consumer forum has directed Internet service provider Sify Limited to pay a compensation of Rs 7,000 including litigation costs to a customer for its failure to provide the promised minimum Internet speed.

“It appears to us that promising providing a connection having minimum speed of 256 kbps ... and then reducing it to 14 kbps cannot be called providing proper service in any manner,” the northwest district consumer forum bench, headed by its president K.S. Khurana, said.

“Moreover, concealing the hidden conditions and not redressing the grievances of the complainant who made complaints with regard to poor customer service on a number of occasions, in our considered opinion, amounts to deficiency in service and indulging in unfair trade practice,” the bench held in a recent order.

Ankur Raheja of Lawrence Road here, who had subscribed to Sify for broadband service from July 16 to September 16 in 2004 at Rs 600 per month, had alleged that Sify had failed to provide the minimum speed of 256 kbps entailed in the definition of broadband.

He found that after downloading 750 mb data, the broadband speed fell to 14 kbps.

To his surprise, Raheja also discovered that although the service provider had called its package “unlimited”, it had some “hidden conditions”.

“If a customer downloaded more than 150 mb data in a day, he was penalised in the form of reduction of package by one day,” Raheja said.

He alleged that such conditions had been “hidden” at the time he entered into the agreement with the service provider.