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Trinankur Banerjee doesn’t have to look up at the clock every few minutes when he sits in front of the computer now. Nor does he have to worry about his phone bills hitting the roof — thanks to the cable Internet connection he took a few months back. Yes, that’s the rage in most parts of Calcutta now. From Garia to Baguihati, Baranagar to Joka, people willing to spend a wee bit more on Internet are swapping their dial-up connections for the faster, and more convenient, cable Internet.
“The whole thing is simple. I don’t need a modem, and my phone line isn’t busy even when I’m online,” says Trinankur, a postgraduate student of Jadavpur University (JU), Calcutta. That, in fact, is the USP of cable Internet. It brings the connection to your house through an optic fibre — bypassing the normal telephone-line route an ordinary dial-up connection would use — to hook up to the Net. The result: you don’t have to wait for long minutes during peak hours for your connection to come to life.
Says Ashok Vaswani of Sanchar Cable Internet in New Alipore, “Cable Internet works through a network to which all users have their computers connected.” According to the cable operators, speeds vary mostly between 56 and 128 kilobits per second (kbps). Just to get an idea of how fast this is, remember that a simple dial-up connection usually allows a maximum surfing speed of 10 to 40 kbps. And while there are installation charges, some providers like Mrinal Chatterjee of Akash Sutra Internet — the company supplies cable Internet in the Dum Dum-Nagerbazar belt — waived even those. “They are my old customers, and I can do this much for them,” he says.
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Hello, I’m still here
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has DIAS, which operates through the copper loop of the telephone line. “DIAS or Direct Internet Access Service allows you to talk on your phone even as you surf the Net,” says S.K. Bhaduri, GM sales, BSNL. The benefits of this are two-fold for the user. Your telephone line is never busy because you’re online. Secondly, the Net connection is ready as soon as you switch on your PC. Surfing speeds are much higher — 128 kbps (kilobits per second) is the peak limit. DIAS doesn’t require a modem, and using it, over 3,000 customers in Calcutta log on to the Net everyday.
Buying time
And for the price-conscious, there are other offers. Account-free Instant Internet, launched by BSNL around a year back, is one such option. It is a dial-up connection, but the user doesn’t need to buy hours from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). “It’s very convenient for a student like me,” says Debsena Banerjee, a postgraduate student from JU. “I prefer to pay for the hours rather than a monthly fare.”
Faster, higher
Then there are the broadband connections, in use in offices but still, as far as the domestic user is concerned, prohibitively expensive. According to a TRAI document, any connection that offers speed of over 256 kbps can be technically called broadband. The super-fast speed lets you download much bigger files from the Net. But here again, the cost is a disadvantage — most broadband connections come with a price tag of a few thousand for just the installation. “We hope to bring costs down, but not before the end of the year,” says Bhaduri.
Going mobile
If you have a Reliance phone, connecting to the Net might be even easier. With a Reliance mobile in your pocket, all you need is a CD and an R connect cable. When you attach your mobile to the PC through the cable, you can surf at speeds above 100 kbps. The G Tran card is even better — it just has to be loaded into the laptop, and even without a phone one can log on to the Net.
But if Indian users think that’s fast, they still have miles to go. In countries like Germany and Sweden speeds as high as three, four, or even 10 mbps (mega bits per second) are not uncommon. That’s at least a hundred times faster than anything we’re used to. As Bhaduri says, “In coming days speed will hold the key.”