Thoughts on the proposed submarine cables!
( larger image available at http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/alcatel_large.gif)
Last week dhiraagu announced that they were going to lay an international submarine cable.. And following suit Wataniya and Focus Infocom to lay another cable..
Well I’d have to say about time!!! I can’t even begin to imagine how much easier life would be for people like us if these two projects are successful... and by being successful I mean the benefits of this being available for consumers like us at a reasonable price... of coz..
This might finally mean availability of services that we have been dreaming of.... more importantly the usability of services that we have been dreaming of...
True we say we have "broadband" internet service available at the moment... sure .. there are packages which state 256kbps all the way upto 1Mbps too..... but anyone who has been using them knows that we hardly ever get the speed stated... sure we might get this speed up to the ISP servers... maybe close to that when accessing local servers.... but almost never to international traffic... mainly cos the INTERNATIONAL bandwidth is shared.... and sometimes shared so much that the speed stated becomes insignificant...
take the dhiraagu "baraboa" package for example.. The ADSL home user package that they have been marketing as 256/64 kbps... the contention on that package according to TAM (http://www.tam.gov.mv/articles.php?artID=21) is 1:200.... now wat does this 1:200 figure have to do with speed...???
well my understanding of contention leads me to believe that this 1:200 means that the stated 256Kbps is allocated for around 200 users. and increased in the same ratio... so this could mean that at any given time your so called 256kbps connected is shared among 199 other 256kbps connections... which is of coz.. very misleading to an average consumer....pls correct me if im wrong....
Focus Infocom also probably has a similar level of connection sharing but I don’t have any figures for them....
Anyways... what's gonna happen when these two cables are in operation?.... well I haven’t a clue abt whats gonna happen.. but I have my opinions on what should happen....
As dhiraagu has been so kind to point out in their press release
Now.. with satellite transmission of data.. the inevitable lag... or latency has been a major issue... satellites are a lot slower than the submarine cables for transmitting and receiving data so it is SLOW... this lag issue has prevented a lot of value added services from being properly deployed in the country... the most important service for me is VOIP... ability to play games online.... etc.. did i forget to mention that satellite traffic is wayyyyyyyy costly compared to traffic on cable?.... hmm well it is.. so.. are we gonna get a lower price to reflect that?
now VOIP means "Voice over IP".. which is ( in internet context ) jus another fancy way of saying that your voice is sent over the internet.... anyways.. its just equivalent to talking over the internet... sure we can talk over the internet now.. using MSN messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc....but most of us would have experienced this delay... most of the time seems like we're talking on a walkie talkie.... and even then there are cracks in the voice transmission... which makes it bothersome and even frustrating to talk over the internet...
with the latency issues gone... and with increased capacity.. we might be able to make proper use of VOIP... this would prove to be extremely useful for businesses and homes who has to make overseas calls on a regular basis.... if u have a good internet connection u could cut off your phone bill drastically by using VOIP services.... coz then you wouldn’t have to use your Telco to make phones over the traditional phone network...
if u are calling someone lets say in the UK... and both of you has internet.. the cost of making a call from your computer to computer would be.. nothing extra.... the cost of internet is all ud be paying... there are really good computer to computer VOIP services available... including Skype..which is one of my personal favorites... the sound quality is awesome... you could also make calls from your compute to someone else’s regular telephone using the internet for darn cheap prices.... like around less than MRF 1 a min for the USA and many other countries... compare that to the price we have to pay now...
anyways enough about VOIP.... even general surfing....and video conferencing its almost impossible to watch a good streaming video at 300kbps without it dropping frames even on a 512kbps connection in Male'... aah how I long for a day when I can watch the music videos at yahoo launch without dropping frames....
Now I’m not too sure why they decided to lay two different cables, one good cable would have provided enough bandwidth to cover the total existing bandwidth of Maldives a few hundred times over... but I’m not complaining... two is always better than one... specially if these two cables are connected to two different backbones.. and they play nice and share the combined bandwidth... or is that asking for too much :)
so.. all in all... im very excited abt this submarine cable proposal.... I jus hope we get to enjoy the benefits..
posted by Daadi @ 11:54 AM
4 Comments:
as i heard the 3 companies.. dhiraagu, focus and wataniyyaa were planing to do work on ONE submarine cable project, or has it been changed? please clarify me on it.. cheers!
Yeah originally it was supposed to be ONE cable by the 3 companies...
dhiraagu pulled out... something about technicality and something more abt not owning the cables... im not too clear on the matter yet.
so now its 2 cables... one by dhiraagu and one by focus infocom an wataniya..
With Dhiraagu they give what they promise with bandwidth. This blogger is mistaken if he argues that the bandwidth is being sqeezed. There is nothing confusing about about 1:200 contention ratio ( good that Dhiraagu gives this information unlike Focus), and this is how it works.
The only thing that is going to improve is latency and possibly routing - good news for real-time uses like VoIP. What dhiraahgu means by unlimted is that they will have the capacity to grow wihtout limitation and this does not mean that they will offer unlimited bandwidth with a home package etc. You get what you pay for...you need atleast 32Kbps for toll quality calls.
Dhiraagu would will hesitate to allow at any time allow VoIP unless you pay enough for that, and this will remain the same even if they lay this cable.
Anyway Dhiraagu must have done this a long time ago.
Okay.. I didn’t say dhiraagu is not delivering… I said the issue of contention is confusing to the average user and it remains to be just that… a connection with a 1:20 ratio and another one with 1:200 ratio both running at lets say an advertised speed of 256kpbs will have significant speed difference. True.. to someone who knows the implications of the contention ratio this is pretty straightforward an of coz would not expect anything more. And true again… the cost of the 1:20 package will be higher than the 1:200 package…
About dhiraagu not allowing VoIP unless you pay for it… I’m curious.. how will dhiraagu even if they wanted to stop VoIP? To them its just gonna be data…are they gonna pass some regulation that says that VoIP is unlawful an that saving on international calls is not allowed? I sure hope not… sure they prolly can block a lot of VoIP services and servers if they wanted to but I hardly think they have the right to do so!
Anyways ur right on the cost part.. we’re gonna get what we pay for… that’s the whole point isn’t it…? How much do we have to pay…? Will it be cheaper? Will the service be better, faster and more reliable? Remains to be seen.
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