Talk:Internet in Bangladesh

Quality of service and market reach (now "Service quality")

Starting at 10:37 on 29 August 2012‎ User:Yafarhad (talk | contribs) made a series of edits that added a new sub-section on "Quality of service and market reach" (now Service quality). At 13:26 on 29 August 2012 I (User:W163) made an edit to cleanup the new content and add several cleanup templates (ref improve section, citation needed, failed verification, POV-statement, and Editorializing). Starting at 12:25 on 30 August 2012‎ Yafarhad made another series of edits that added a number of references and expanded the content somewhat. Around the same time he also sent me the following very nice private message:

From: Yafarhad 
Subject: RE: Internet_in_Bangladesh -> Quality_of_service_and_market_reach
Date: August 30, 2012 1:49:38 PM EDT
To: W163 

Hello Jeff,

Thanks for your input on my recent edits on this topic. I am very new with 
editing but I researched on and understood the issues you pointed out. I 
have tried my best to improve the "tone" and added some more links (citations) 
for the content to be verifiable.

I would highly appreciate if you reevaluate these and get back to me for more 
information on the topic, with your advises and specific arguments on the 
content as appropriate.

Basically, the "quality" issue is clearly visible (and verifiable) in the 
Net Index rank (174/176). I just tried to explain the apparent reasons behind 
this. I know it has been kind of opinionated, but again, if you ask me, it's 
the opinion of every aware user of this Internet industry, in this country. 
My motivation behind adding these information was to grow awareness among 
the users and policy makers by pinpointing the key issues - the government 
is way too "reserved" (also, greedy and biased towards state owned incapable 
businesses) to allow the private sector to expand and serve the market. I 
appreciate your help to make this information fit for Wikipedia, if possible.

Best regards,
Yasin Al Farhad

Since then I've made several more edits to the section and the article as a whole. I expect to make several more over the next few days. As I progress I will try to explain the thinking behind my changes here.

--Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

It was these statements in the original section that caught my attention:

• "the monopoly on raw bandwidth business (IIG)" and "lack of competition"
• "Majority of those who can afford and/or are under coverage are not satisfied either with the quality of service they get versus the price they pay for it."
• "Some of the major ISPs including but not limited to BTCL, BanglaLion, Qubee and Link3 are best of among the worsts by quality of service"
• "Local ISPs (resellers) and mobile (GPRS/EDGE/EVDO) service providers has more market exposure but even worse quality of service; Clearly unfit for modern applications."

While it is possible that all of these statements are true, the specific statements were only backed up in a general way by the two citations included and those citations did not include the word or phrases "monopoly", "lack of competition", "majority", "best among worsts", and "unfit for modern applications". One of the sources cited included the following statement "BTRC has successfully issued three Glossary Link International Gateway (IGW) Licenses, two Glossary Link Interconnection Exchange (ICX) Licenses and one Glossary Link International Internet Gateway (IIG) License through open auctions. The Licensees have already established their respective IGWs, ICXs and IIG and became operational..." that made me wonder if there was still a "monopoly on raw bandwidth business (IIG)". All of this caused me to end my first edit summary with the plea "This section needs more work by someone other than me."

Yafarhad was kind enough to work on his section and add several more references. Some of the references are quite good, one is good but likely out-of-date since it is to a 1997 paper, another is to a 2007 article, and several others are to blog postings that probably aren't considered reliable sources on Wikipedia. I have some more reading/research to do, but my general impression is that even with the new references, that many of the problems outlined above remain. Specifically, the references support the statements made in the article in a general way, but they do not always support the specific conclusions and wording in the section. As such I think the section may still be editorializing and the wording is not always NPOV. It is possible that some of the conclusions are Original Research, which is to be avoided. So, I think that either more reliable references that support the specific conclusions and wording in the section need to be found or the section needs to be rewritten to more closely follow its reliable sources, to be NPOV, and to avoid editorializing.

--Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:24, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I changed the phrase "quality of service" to "service quality" since QoS has a specialized meaning on the Internet. I dropped "and market reach" from the heading since there isn't as much discussion of that topic in this section as there is in some other sections of the article. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 22:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I just finished quite a bit of editing, rewriting, and reordering on this and two other related sections. I think/hope that they are better sourced now. I have not been able to find sources for what is now the second paragraph of the sub-section on "Cyber cafés and Local Service Providers (LSPs)". Unless some sources can be found, I think this paragraph will have to be deleted. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 18:32, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Monopoly on raw bandwidth business (IIG)

Mango is the only "private" IIG. There's no competitor to Mango from the private sector. On the other hand, BTRC (govt. regulator) continues to impose various (planned) conditions and restrictions to private ISPs. So, it's still a syndicated monopoly by the state. You will find more pointers from Sunil Tagare's "Who will regulate the regulators?" where he points out how crippled the policies are. He used the term "duopoly" (which I think is a specialised form of monopoly) in place of monopoly. I think he is a credible person in the telecom industry. So, is this adequate or do we need more references?

(to be continued...)

Yasin Al Farhad (talk) 14:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

In addition to Mango, is there a public sector IIG? --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk)

Yes, BTCL is the public sector IIG. See http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=218242 for some more info. -- Yasin Al Farhad (talk) 13:36, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, then there are two IIGs and that isn't a monopoly unless one has control over the other or a third organization has control over both. Two players may not be enough to ensure vigorous competition and you can say that if there is a reliable source that says that limited competition is part of the problem. But you can't say there is a monopoly.

I don't think you can use Sunil Tagare to claim that there is a IIG "duopoly" either since Tagare is talking about an international optical cable license and that isn't the same as an IIG, is it? Also, Tagare's blog isn't likely to be considered a reliable source. You could try to use it as a source anyway and perhaps no one will challenge it. That is your call. But make sure that your summary closely follows the source. In this case it would need to talk about the optical cable license and not IIGs. And Tagare is speculating that a duopoly could be created in the future, it doesn't exist now (or at least not at the time he was writing his blog).

I'm sorry if this all seems difficult and I know from personal experience that it can be frustrating. I do think you have more than enough material from reliable sources for a good addition to the article. You just need to write your material carefully so that it follows your sources. You may not be able to say things exactly they way you might wish to, but I think you should still be able to make the essential points that you are trying to get across: (i) that the service quality is poor and prices are high, (ii) that lack of competition is part of the problem, (iii) that while the government has made IT a priority since at least 2008 there are doubts that the problems are being addressed in an effective and timely fashion.

--Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 22:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Public comments on Facebook groups or pages

Question: Are (enough number of) public posts or comments on Facebook pages or groups considered valid source of information?

Yasin Al Farhad (talk) 20:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Generally no. See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 21:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

How else do you find out customer satisfaction/experience in a country where nobody researched (lacks awareness) about it and where there's no customer/consumer interest group/association to deal such problems? How about contextual exception, if any? Can't enough comments from more than a few different facebook account (assumed real persons) supporting some pice of information be considered as valid sources? (Customers/consumers are the first source of such info - it doesn't take you an academic research to understand whether the customer is happy with the service/product or not; please note the context) --Yasin Al Farhad (talk) 16:13, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

This isn't up to me. I'm just an editor like you and others. You need to read Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability and draw your own conclusions about what is or isn't allowed as a reliable source.

Drawing conclusions from raw Facebook or other social media comments is likely to be original research. Wikipedia wants summaries based on reliable secondary sources and discourages/prohibits original research and the use of primary sources, although like most things in Wikipedia, there are exceptions. See: Wikipedia:No original research and WP:PRIMARY for more information.

Using published academic research isn't required, there are other reliable sources. For example, newspapers and their online equivalents often make good reliable sources.

--Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 21:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

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