Broadband Internet Speed test

According to Business Standard, India:
The government is likely to miss its target of three million broadband users to be acheived by the end of 2005, of which 50% was to be achieved by PSU operators.

Meanwhile, Trai today asked the centre to reconsider its proposal of unbundling the local loop and offer incentives to bring down the costs of the access.

WiMAX is an acronym that stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, a certification mark for products that pass conformity and interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 standards.

In plain English, it’s a wireless form of broadband access. It’s got a longer range than Wi-Fi and provides more bandwidth. 802.16 provides up to 50 km of linear service area range and allow for connectivity without direct line-of-sight. In practical terms the range is somewhere between 5 to 8 km. WiMAX is a point-to-multipoint access technology, and while some claim an aggregated data rate of up to 70 Mbps, enough to support some 60 T1-capacity customers, real world tests show that actual connection speed is somewhere between 500 kbps and 2 Mbps per customer.

The advantage over DSL and cable is that obviously no copper wires or cable networks need to exist at the customer site, making it an ideal technology for rural areas.

Read more about WiMAX at the WiMAX Forum.

But only if your neighbor is the telephone exchange.
The top speed of 24 Mbps is only achievable if you live within 300 meters of the exchange, in reality next-door.

But, who needs 24 Mbps anyway? There are lots of providers offering 8 Mbps services, a speed which is good enough for most people.