(2 January 2008 1:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: The telecom sector regulator Trai has told all broadband service providers to ensure that they state in their advertisement the minimum guaranteed speed, and avoid promissory but misleading statements like "up to", as the national standard for defining 'broadband' is a minimum of 256 kbps from the POP to the subscriber.

Many service providers have been misleading subscribers by stating that their service provides "up to" 256 kbps, whereas the actual speed is much less and fragmented, leading to mounting customer complaints, the latest Status Report on Broadband from Trai has noted.

This is why the stern warning, and the Status Report, released on 1 January, states that all the service providers have agreed to abide by this dictum.

Trai states that it has collated the experiences across the globe to compile the report, and found that there are differing standards. While the US defines broadband as minimum guaranteed speed of minimum of 200 kbps, France has set its standard as 2 kbps.

Malaysia, United Kingdom and Pakistan define broadband at a minimum speed of 128 kbps. Though Japan and Korea have no set definitions, the services in these two countries start at 2 kbps.

South Korea last year unveiled the plan for total fibre optic network which will enable any home there to access broadband at 3 gbps speed.

Trai has said also that there is need to expedite the process of reaching 2 kbps (It may be noted that the government's Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd at Delhi ushered in WiFi at 2 kbps last year and is about to announce the results of WiMax experiment it had undertaken in select government offices).

Though Trai has recommended to the government to expedite release of spectrum for 3G and WiMax technologies, the Status Paper says that in the existing copper loop - as against fibre optic system - the reach of broadband may expand but the speed will not be high. Fibre optics is a basic condition of attaining desirable speed.

Trai has noted that the target of 9 million broadband subscribers by 2007 has failed badly. The target set for 2010 is 20 million.