CHANDIGARH, May 3: A Dilbert cartoon recently portrayed a character slumping on the computer keyboard. "Jet lag?" - inquires somebody. "No, not jet lag, it is net lag", says the blurb.For City residents, however, it seems to be "net lack," rather than "net lag." Accessing the net is a difficult task in Chandigarh, and despite a year and a half of Internet connectivity, surfing on the net is yet to become popular.
Following repeated complaints from subscribers, an attempt was made to log on to the Internet and to get a first hand experience of the problems faced by Internet subscribers.
An attempt was made to connect to the Internet after every half an hour, and each time three calls were made to the DoT Internet server. The first trial call was made at 8.30 a.m. and the experiment continued till 11.00 p.m..Surprisingly, out of the 30 attempts made every half hour, only two attempts to connect to the Internet were successful, one at 11.30 in the morning, and another at 4.30 in the afternoon!
Most attempts to connect with the DoT Internet server met with the telephone encountering an "engaged tone". Apart from this two attempts did succeed in getting the call through. However, while the bell continued ringing, the attempt was not successful, as the server did not ask for the login name and the password.
Subscribers claim that this is the experience which they face every day and only a few times are their attempts to connect fully successful. On some occasions, the connection is shaky and after a few minutes it disconnects. ``Browsing in such a situation becomes a rarity'', complains a subscriber.The main reason for this problem seems to be the ratio of number of subscribers to the number of lines provided to the DoT Internet server.Officials of the Department of Telecom state that 32 lines have been provided for Internet connection. The number of subscribers in the city is about 625. Despite witnessing a phenomenal sale of computers in the city, the number of Internet connections in the city is abysmally low, which is also attributed by subscribers to the quality of Internet services. Some subscribers also doubt whether the 32 lines and modems provided for Internet are continuously functional all the time.
One reason touted by officials for the problems is that apart from city subscribers, there are a number of ``floating subscribers''.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
