Visakhapatnam: MySpeed, the Telecom Regulatory Authority’s (TRAI) recently released app for Android and iOS users, designed to provide users relief from low speed, measures the mob-ile Internet speed being made available to the device and sends a report to TRAI. This may be of help to users, but it has its drawbacks, users say. More than 1,000 people have so far downloaded the app from the Android Playstore. Several of them have complained about its poor quality. The app requires access to media files and the location of the device, which is understandable when the speed test is carried out. But netizens are baffled by the need for mandatory access to me-dia files, with some also reporting cases of distorted, and possibly flawed, measurements of speed.
App user Sunil Kumar Shah says it was quite useless as each test produced a different result. “I ran the test thrice, the download speeds being 1, 0.2 and 0.7 Mbps, whereas I have subscribed to the 0.5 Mbps speed plan that provides an average of 55 kbps download speed.” Another netizen, Raja-ram Das, pointed out that, when one measured data speed through the app, it only showed the highest speed at that time, while the rest of the time it was in kbps. This needed to be improved.
Another user Sreekanth Yelicherla said the app was not working properly. No upload test took place. “I don’t understand what happens after it starts the download test. Only the speed is shown,” he said. TRAI will use the data collected from subscribers to fix new service quality (QoS) norms — a process that will start in a month or so. TRAI will start the consultation process soon to fix the QoS benchmark for wireless data through the Myspeed app.
TRAI will get real-time data from customers, put it on the TRAI Analytics Portal and show mobile data speed of each operator in a given area on real-time basis. Sources said nearly 29 private service providers and four public sector providers offered internet services in Andhra Pradesh. The mobile data usage in the country is close to 1.4 million terabytes in 2015-16, which has increased to more than twice in the last three years.
