Studying the Indian mobile Internet networks: Chota recharge and the chota Internet

TL;DR

This study analyzes India's mobile Internet connectivity and performance, revealing significant disparities and highlighting that affordability does not guarantee equitable access or optimal network performance.

Contribution

It provides an exploratory analysis of mobile Internet trends in India, emphasizing infrastructure disparities and the limited measures taken by operators to improve network quality.

Findings

Mobile Internet performance in India is significantly below that of other developing countries.

Network operators have made minimal efforts to scale and improve mobile Internet infrastructure.

Affordable Internet access does not necessarily translate into equitable or high-quality connectivity.

Abstract

Uniform and affordable Internet is emerging as one of the fundamental civil rights in developing countries. However in India, the connectivity is far from uniform across the regions, where the disparity is evident in the infrastructure, the cost of access and telecommunication services to provide Internet facilities among different economic classes. In spite of having a large mobile user base, the mobile Internet are still remarkably slower in some of the developing countries. Especially in India, it falls below 50% even in comparison with the performance of its developing counterparts! This essay presents a study of connectivity and performance trends based on an exploratory analysis of mobile Internet measurement data from India. In order to assess the state of mobile networks and its readiness in adopting the different mobile standards (2G, 3G, and 4G) for commercial use, we discuss the spread, penetration, interoperability and the congestion trends. Based on our analysis, we argue that the network operators have taken negligible measures to scale the mobile Internet. Affordable Internet is definitely for everyone. But, the affordability of the Internet in terms of cost does not necessarily imply the rightful access to Internet services. Chota recharge is possibly leading us to chota (shrunken) Internet!