Globe: Can’t guarantee broadband speed

[shadow]

make sense?


Business Insight | Business

Globe: Can’t guarantee broadband speed

GLOBE Telecom Inc. yesterday said it will comply with the disclosure of minimum broadband speed but cannot assure costumers of 80 percent reliability.

Ernest L. Cu, Globe president, admitted it is difficult to measure guaranteed speed "because you never know the number of subscribers in a particular site" assessing the internet.

Cu asked the National Telecommunications Commission to further clarify how it would measure 80 percent service reliability using the 3G network.

He gave as example a coffee shop where there are more users after office hours than during office hours.

Last week, the NTC released a memorandum order mandating telecom firms to disclose the minimum broadband speed with 80 percent service reliability to stop false advertisements on internet speed.

The telecom regulator said it will not set a minimum broadband speed but the telcos have to make sure they deliver the speed they promise.

[ghosthunter]

It only makes sense if you have no intention to upgrade the existing data handling infrastructure and data-bandwidth.

The infrastructure can handle shifting data loads to a point. That maximum load can be determined and adjusted for, just like in mobile phone services where more cell-sites are installed in areas with heavier use.

[niky]

Obviously, they don't want to be held accountable for the lack of capacity... though I think all of the telcos have this problem. Doesn't make sense for them to increase the sites in provincial areas if they only get spikes of peak usage maybe two or three hours out of every day.

[meledson]

mayroon cap ang globe broadband. tawag nila dito ay "fair usage policy".

[Ry_Tower]

^ yes, you really need to increase capacity kasi may maximum lang talaga per cellsite eh. Kaso it's very expensive.

[digitalron]

Minimum speed and uptime are two separate metrics that are measured differently. The two comprise what is known as a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Setting a minimum guaranteed speed is easy. This is handled by packet shaping equipment. This is measured in Kbps (or Mbps). The problem occurs with over-subscription, when the network requests get queued because there is not enough capacity to accommodate all network requests. In this case, an additional overhead, the request waiting time, is introduced.

Uptime is the amount of time the service is available. This is measured as a percentage in a given time period. Normally, a 99.5% uptime over a year is considered as the bare minimum acceptable; in most cases, 99.9% uptime is what is expected. A 99.5% uptime means that over one year, total downtime can be no more than 45 hours. A 99.9% uptime equates to no more than 9-10 hours of downtime.

"disclose the minimum broadband speed with 80 percent service reliability"

The phrase is indeed vague. This could be interpreted as follows:

The minimum guaranteed speed will be met at least 80% of the time, the other 20% of the time, the speed could fall below the guarantee. The danger here is that the service can have up to 20% downtime (73 days over a one year period, or 4.8 hours downtime a day) but as long the minimum speed is met during the other 80%, then the telco has delivered its "promise"

The NTC stands to do well if it re-words its memo to ask for a guaranteed SLA. The downside to this is the potential for higher internet access cost. In my company, for example, we have multiple internet access contracts that specify a guaranteed speed for a guranteed uptime (one contract stipulates guaranteed 40 Mbps at 99.9% uptime with a burst capability of 100 Mbps measured at the 95th percentile). Of course, such a contract costs a couple thousand dollars a month.