I received an email yesterday from a visitor who asked: "Is it possible to increase the bandwidth, download speeds of [an In2Cable] connection?" I have pretty strong feelings on this matter, and listed below is my response to this person, which I thought I should make public:

In some cases, yes. But please don't do that. It is because of this malpractise that In2Cable has enforced 600MB data transfer limits on their connections. Please be responsible. You must realize that every time you misuse something, someone else suffers (another customer, not necessarily In2Cable).

An ISP equipped with nasty software like 24Online is capable of monitoring everything you do online. This has very obvious implications on our online freedom. Suppose that -- through some miracle -- we were to trust the ISP to respect our privacy, but if their connections are abused by customers, they have no choice but to monitor things closely.

Remember, *nothing* you do online is hidden from the ISP, even if you do it securely via SSL or other means. There is no way you can hide massive amounts of data transfer. It will show up on their screens.

I have a meager 64kbps connection but I have used it to download entire distributions of linux. Now with the 600 MB limit, and a flat Rs 2/- charge for every MB in excess of 600 MB, the same 600 MB download costs me Rs 1200/-. The punk who tweaked his cable modem into clogging the network doesn't really care, but I have to foot the bills.

An analogy I used a while ago on my website was that of buying petrol. Just like you buy petrol to "drive around the city", you buy bandwidth to "drive around the internet". Now imagine if the petrol stations sold you petrol and then started following you around everywhere you went? And if they didn't like the places you went to, or if they felt that you drove around too much, that they would just stop selling you petrol (or only sell you 5 litres a month). There is a reason nobody drives 6.0 litre 12-cylinder 540 HP BMW's in India. Petrol is a precious commodity, and is restricted by the availability of crude oil in nature. People are forced to instead make do with affordable options like 2-wheelers and sub 2000cc cars. But the price of petrol is so important to our economy that it affects our entire productivity as a nation.

This is exactly the same with the internet. We need and value our internet freedom, and can't have people follow us around. But we need to be responsible with our usage so that the costs of internet access don't end up having ISP's impose non-sensical restrictions on our usage yet charge us more and more for the same product. And snoop in on our daily internet activities.

I agree that bandwidth is simply too expensive and too scarce in India. I recently estimated it to be about 12x more expensive than in the US. But there is more to it than just backbone bandwidth. A 64kbps connection costs around Rs1100/- a month with In2Cable, or about $25. A 3.0 Mbps cable modem connection in the US costs about the same (or up to $40 in some places). This is a factor of (3000/64) = 46 times. So on one hand we have 12x more expensive bandwidth in India, but simultaneously our ISP's are charging 46x more than their American counterparts. And in India our average income is 10 times lower than the average American. Something is very seriously wrong here. There is NO surprise why the internet hasn't exploded in India like it has in so many other countries. We have *such* a long road ahead.

We need to stand up and fight the system that refuses to implement true broadband (64kbps is NOT broadband, it is what I prefer to call a joke). We need to make a push to encourage companies and the government to drastrically improve internet infrastructure by *several* orders of magnitude. Hopefully that will bring prices down to a more affordable level, but the way I see it, bandwidth in India will tremendously saturated and tremendously expensive for at least another decade if not more. I have already written to Jaffer Sharief (who is the representative from my area) and the Chief Minister's office to revisit policies that restrict the growth and availability of the internet. And I know merely writing is not enough. One person's voice will probably be ignored. But if you too are concerned about bandwidth and cost for internet connectivity, please take more proactive action rather than just tweaking your cable modem.

In the mean time, the 600 MB limit is the main reason I am looking to transfer from In2Cable to another ISP. Hopefully DSL where people can't "tweak" their modems to give them more bandwidth than is sanctioned.

Also, I deeply resent the attitude that because Linux is free, that Linux users in general don the internet "underworld". The "free" stands for "freedom", not for zero cost. With freedom comes responsibility. So please let's be responsible and respect our fellow users. Let's not commit acts whose consequences are to further limit our freedoms.

Responsible also means that we stay alert and react to overpricing of commodities. Bandwidth is no exception. If we are to be responsible, we must struggle towards a more accessible internet.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,
Rahul Mittal