Internet is now an absolute necessity and the cost of data solutions has become an integral part of our monthly expenditures, thanks to the social networking sites, instant messengers and video streaming websites for changing the mode of communication and entertainment of the city dwellers. While there are still some doubts on cost and quality of data services offered by the 3G & WiMAX operators; I am going to shade some lights on customer’s basic expectations from the mobile operators and ISPs which is independent of bandwidth cost and very high speed. Here are some of my key observations as a customer:
- Don’t confuse us with complicated offers: To win the battle of occupying market share; the ultra intelligent corporate product teams are busy overdoing their work and launching some “super duper” data packages. They often explain tariff plans of these “super duper” packages occupying half of the pages of a daily news paper. Really!! Do you think we even spend that much time analyzing our data usage! No. We don’t. All we want is a simple tariff plan, something that will help us to easily keep track of our expenditure on data and won’t give us a shock at the end of the month with a well designed and hidden catch. We don’t want to be the victim of crazy push SMS bombardment with misleading package offers either.
- Don’t manipulate bandwidth/speed limits because we know what we want: The ISPs and Telco Operators need to understand how we use their products before deciding on any surprises. Here is an example: watching videos and listening to music on YouTube is fun, but how many of us watch the full video for every single music/video options that we click on YouTube. A 1 Mbps connection is good enough to give a buffer free experience on YouTube. On the other hand if the speed is doubled; a 2 Mbps connection can download a 5 Minute video clip on YouTube buffer in 30 seconds. You may lose interest on that particular video after 1 minute and jump to another one. This means data download in the YouTube buffer with a high speed connection for the remaining 4 minutes is completely wasted. Imagine how much data will be wasted in a month! It won’t be a good experience for a cost sensitive and limited volume data package user if he runs out of his data limit in the middle of the month. Recently an ISP doubled the speed of its loyal customers to enhance their internet experience; I am not sure whether it had a positive impact on all users. Rather I think many of the limited data package users ran out of data limit at the middle of the month, unless they “paid extra” to get additional data volume.
- Don’t do planned maintenance in silence while we work: Many ISPs & Telco Operators are expanding their networks for 3G, LTE or 4G technologies. We understand that it is important for them to complete the work to abide their license clauses and business plans. But they also need understand that what we do on the internet may also very important for us and our business. And interruption caused by their regular maintenance work may cost us a lot more than what we pay for the service.
- Don’t be too loud about your technology because it is the service that we actually pay for: We expected 3G to be launched at least 5 years back and we are still struggling to keep the pace with the rest of the world in terms telecommunications services. Still overpromise and under delivery has been a consistent trend of our ISPs and Telco operators. 3 G, 3.5 G, 3.75 G, 3.99 G and whatever G means nothing but some random numbers unless we see a real difference on our small screens (mobile devices) and Large screens (Desktops). Some undernourished ISPs who could do very little with WiMAX technology in the past five years are again being given the free go to launch LTE/4G. We don’t want another technology to be mishandled by these minnows with limited resources and wait for another 5 years to get the real taste of LTE/4G when it becomes obsolete to be taken over by another next generation technology.
Consumer data service is a very important sector for the economic development of Bangladesh. So it should not be used only as a money making option by the revenue focused ISPs.
-By Imtiaz Ahmad