Keeping in mind the regular complaints of the Indian users regarding the slow speed of dial-up and broadband connections, Telecom regulator TRAI has decided that regulation should be kept in place in order to make sure that connections are provided by the internet service providers (ISPs) only on the capacity of traffic they can carry.

According to TRAI, majority of ISPs are eager to accommodate a higher number of subscribers and in doing so, they compromise on quality, which adversely affects broadband speeds and congests networks. This step has been taken since the regulator had been long receiving hundreds of complaints which said that broadband/dial-up speeds are almost always lower than those promised by the operators.

TRAI informed that the regulations would prove to be beneficial for end users as it would protect the interests of internet consumers in India and thus, enhance customer satisfaction.

TRAI announcement added, "The concept of virtual office and remote office is gaining popularity. E-Commerce, e-health, video world, virtual tours and e-marts are some of the other emerging popular applications requiring huge bandwidth which are time-sensitive. In such a scenario, quality of service is of prime importance."

The bandwidth availability decides the number of high-speed Internet connections an ISP can support. Furthermore, the regulator is also looking forward to certain guidelines that will define the ratio between the numbers of customers per unit bandwidth, which is known as contention ratio.

If adhered to international practices, then the average contention ratio for a home user package is 50:1 and that for business package is 20:1.