The Malta Communications Authority wants local internet service providers to give more information about the quality of service of their wired or fixed-wireless broadband internet access packages. This would include such technical information as latency and packet loss.
To this effect the authority has published a consultation document and is receiving feedback until the end of this month.
“It is up to the ISPs to tailor their own packages in order to reflect the needs of their subscribers and the market in general. The authority is however proposing a minimum level of service relative to any performance figure included in service contracts that a service provider must respect,” the authority explained in its document.
To date, a broadband internet connection is characterised at point of sale on the basis of upload and download speed; the volume of data to be transferred over the connection; and the platform over which the access network is based. In addition, all speeds are quoted on an “up-to” basis.
This situation gives rise to two concerns, the MCA said. “The first relates to whether the qualities currently used, namely upload and download speed and volume of data are adequate to appropriately characterise the service and second, what are the acceptable methodologies which should be employed to measure these qualities.”
Indeed the authority is of the view that this gives rise to a situation in which broadband services are sold without a guarantee of a minimum performance being given to the subscribers, performance figures quoted by different ISPs cannot be directly compared, and subscribers are not well informed of the performance that the broadband connection is capable of. Therefore, it is difficult for subscribers to make informed choices when agreeing to a contract with an ISP.
“Broadband subscribers have a right to choose the service provider which best suits their needs. A subscriber therefore needs to have access to the right information that will enable an informed decision to be taken and that will facilitate comparison of services being offered on the market. Broadband subscribers have a right to know the performance of the broadband service that they are subscribed to. ISPs should only market broadband packages which they can physically provide,” the authority insisted.
The new quality of service framework being suggested by the MCA incorporates new parameters to characterise an internet broadband service. These include upload and download data transmission speeds; availability of internet service which denotes the percentage of time that the broadband service is available; latency, which denotes the time taken for a packet of data to arrive at its destination (important for applications which are real time and interactive in nature such as online gaming and voice over IP); and packet loss, which denotes the number of packets which are lost during transmission (a connection with poor packet loss performance reflects in the end-user experience vis-à-vis applications which do not afford retransmission of data, e.g. video streaming of live content).
It is proposed that ISPs offering fixed broadband internet access (both wired and wireless) should be required to publish the performance of their different broadband package in terms of the proposed quality of service parameters on a quarterly basis. The passive data collection technique is should be based on an analysis of the flow of traffic over the network. At the same time the authority recognises the fact that not all the network elements are under the direct control of the ISP.
The MCA is also suggesting a time frame, spread over a period of nine months from the publication of the final decision, for the implementation of the proposed quality of service framework.
Feedback on this document, which is available on the MCA’s website, will be received until March 28.
www.mca.org.mt