With quarantine effectively in place all across the nation, we homebound Nepali have turned to the internet for comfort. But sadly enough, the Nepali internet speed, and the ISPs that provide them nationwide, are like the pictures on fast food ads. They’re nothing even close to what’s promised. You order a pizza hoping it to be the cheesiest, softest and most heavenly piece of food you’ve ever put in your mouth, aaand… you get what looks like a piece of colorful Chapatti instead. Talk about disappointment.
Rise in demand leads to slower internet speed:
ISPs all across the nation have been facing problems maintaining the quality of the services they provide. Internet speeds have been throttled. While the diminishing internet speeds have been pretty darn annoying for folks just wanting to lay back and Netflix and chill, it has had devastating effects on people working from home or those enrolled in a distance learning program.
Those working from home and using video conferencing apps like Zoom, Webex, Skype, U Meeting, etc have noticed a considerable quality decrease while using those services. ISPs struggle to provide high and stable broadband internet speed at an affordable price for its users. And it doesn’t help that Nepal places 127th out of 140 countries in terms of internet speeds. Slow uplink, unstable broadband speeds, and high ping rates have made using such video conferencing apps a pain in the nether-regions. Slow uplink speed means that employees also have to suffer from lags in uploading their files for their work teams. Stable work flow has turned from something every team strives for, to being virtually non-existent. Task management and scheduling have become more unpredictable than ever.
With more and more educational institutions switching to an online classroom environment, students have been running into problems adapting to an online learning environment as well. Most students whose internet speeds can’t keep up with the live classroom have to watch recorded lectures later on. What’s the point of enrolling in a live online classroom if you can’t interact with the lecturers in real-time? That being said, what’s the point of joining a live classroom if the resolution is so horrible you can’t make out if the lecturer is a guy or a gal?
The dilemma is real, folks.
Fighting this problem, head on!
NTA has recently requested its users to use the internet reasonably, and that IS the right thing to do. While you can’t convince a nation of bored and frustrated individuals to cut out their internet use completely, it’s more reasonable to suggest that we use our internet for tasks that require immediate attention only. For watching shows or sitcoms, we can download them during low traffic hours like early mornings or midnight. You can automate such tasks easily using apps like Automate on mobile or RoboTask or Shortcat on Windows or Mac. This way, you can free up bandwidth for people who really need it, while enjoying your favorite content lag-free.
During the heavy load hours, you can do less load-heavy tasks such as messaging your buddies, catching up with your favorite news site, or reading fun and informative blogs (like TechnoSanta!). And, as surprising as it may sound to the typical dopamine addicted 21st-century individual… no, you don’t need to check your Facebook or Instagram feed every 15 minutes to survive!
To summarize:
- Rise in internet users during quarantine has throttled internet speeds across the country. ISPs struggle to provide stable internet speeds to its users due to the sudden increase in service demand.
- Those working from home and students enrolled in online classes seem to be the ones most affected by unstable internet speeds.
- To mitigate these effects, NTA requests heavy internet users to use their services more reasonably. With limited resources and broadband capacity available to ISPs, being clever and decisive about when and how you use the internet can reduce the effects you feel dramatically.
