Broadband users, who require high speed, can now opt for Fibre To The Home (FTTH) being provided by the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). The FTTH service provides up to100 Mbps bandwidth as against 8 Mbps being offered for landline-based broadband connection.
“The demand for FTTH is quite encouraging since its launch in the city five months ago. A total of 45 connections were given in Sector XII in Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and 100 more are pending. There are also applicants seeking FTTH connections at the HPCL Petro Park at Mindi and the IT SEZ at Rushikonda,” Additional General Manager (CFA) P. Raju told The Hindu on Wednesday.
“The FTTH service allows customers access to high-end features such as ‘video on demand' and IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) besides broadband at high speeds. Customers could avail themselves of IPTV services once the franchisee is finalised,” he said.
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“The high quality content at speeds of 100 Mbps is not possible through conventional copper lines. The common problem associated with copper cable such as noise during a call can be overcome through FTTH,” Divisional Engineer (OCB and BB) K. Chandrasekhar said.
“An experience centre has been launched at the Dabagardens Customer Service Centre (CSC) to enable customers to get first hand experience of the operation of the system and another one would be opened at the Asilmetta CSC. Connections will be given when customers of an area approach in groups of 10 or more. This is so as it may not be cost-effective to lay the expensive fibre optic cable for a single customer living in a remote location,” he said.
The number of broadband users in the city has touched 35,000, which is 8,000 connections more compared to last year and 20,000 more than the number three years ago. When his attention was drawn to the common complaint of ‘slow speed' by BSNL customers, Mr. Chandrasekhar said the speed was dependent on various factors and it could be the same with any network and not BSNL alone.
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Citing an example, he said Google would be the fast under any network but the same may not be the case with other search engines. Similarly, the IRCTC network would be slow in any network, particularly between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., as innumerable passengers would be logging in at the same time.