Broadband Quality Score- The Term You Should Know!

Recently, Telecomblogs came across a report by Said Business School, Oxford University on Global Study of Broadband Quality. The highly acclaimed report is based on last year’s Cisco sponsored study of the development of Broadband Quality Score- a index that combines the key performance parameters to measure the quality of broadband connection. Below are some of the key findings of the study:

• The broadband quality is linked to social and economical benefits, and the countries with high broadband quality have broadband on their national agenda.
• Investments in fiber and cable upgrades improve broadband quality.
• The identified main BQS factors are Download and Upload Throughput, latency, packet loss, network oversubscription, jitter etc.
• Though currently, social networking, basic video chats etc are driving broadband services, in future Visual networking, HD IPTV and large file sharing will drive the growth.
• Education and Fiber upgrades drive the broadband quality to higher end leading to generation of knowledge economy; GDP/Per capita, PC/Per capita etc drive broadband penetration to higher end leading to competitiveness and innovation economy.
• BQS are calculated based on normalized values of UL, DL Throughput and latecy and based on those calculated BQS, Central and E. Europe topped chart of Avg BQS/Region at 38 followed by W.Europe (35) and N.America (34).
• Korea has highest BQS (66), followed by Lithuania (54) (I guess you heard the name of this Baltic Country before) and Bulgaria (49), while two global powers China and India ranked 49th and 62^nd(Among last five) in the study. Surely, we don’t have a national broadband plan and telecomblogs doesn’t see any chance occurance of it in near future. (Read me at SiliconIndia about my vision on National Broadband Plan-2020)

The study also gives recommendations to key stakeholders, like Governments, Policy makers for setting national broadband agenda (US is Best example of this) for penetration and quality, and for service providers it advises on building a broadband business model based on quality as key differentiator (Unlike only advertising Downlink speed). Lots of learning though; we expect least changes in scenario till NGN Spectrum license is awarded.