2G/3G QoS measurements

2G/3G data connections are the dominant channel for Internet access for much of India. The quality of service for mobile Internet however leaves much to be desired, and consequently, some years back we set up two dozen measurement points in rural and urban locations across 3 states in India, and continuously over 6 months probed the availability, throughput, latency, and several other parameters of network performance. The results were startling and pointed towards several problems in the network configuration of cellular operators, gaps in the measurement methodologies recommended by the telecom regulatory body in India (TRAI) for cellular operators to report their performance, and the strong need to build better QoS regulations to create a competitive landscape where operators compete not just on price but also on performance. We therefore partnered with the consumer rights organization CUTS, who supplemented this work with a survey of several hundred respondents and built a stronger case for consumer awareness on QoS, and took the issues up to TRAI. CUTS has since then worked relentlessly advocating for better QoS regulations, and with the effort of all the partners they are now advocating for nutrition labels for QoS that would need to be disclosed by the operators. We are supplementing this advocacy effort by identifying appropriate performance metrics that should be included in the labels, mapping QoS to QoE to be able to build simple star-rated labels that can be easily understood by the consumers, and building an app which will make all these labels easily accessible. Our publications, reports, and a response to the recent TRAI consultation paper on data speed can be found below.

Publications:

Response to TRAI consultation paper on Data Speed Under Wireless Broadband Connections - A. Seth.
Submitted, June 2017

Mobile Internet Services in India: Quality of Service - Joint report with CUTS and IIT Delhi, foreword by Prof Krithi Ramamritham (IIT Bombay).
Presented to TRAI, 2016

Revisiting the State of Cellular Data Connectivity in India - A. Sharma, M. Kaur, Z. Koradia, R. Nishant, S. Pandit, A. Raman, and A. Seth.
ACM DEV 2015

First impressions on the state of cellular data connectivity in India - Z. Koradia, G. Mannava, A. Raman, G. Aggarwal, V. Ribeiro, A. Seth, S. Ardon, A. Mahanti, and S. Triukose.
ACM DEV (4), 2013

2G/3G network measurements in rural areas of India - A. Chandele, Z. Koradia, V. Ribeiro, A. Seth, S. Triukose, S. Ardon, and A. Mahanti.
ACM DEV (3), 2013 (poster)