Unfortunately enough for me, I have never been able to connect to a better broadband from my home in Pondicherry than a BSNL connection. The operators who are available in my area are SIFY, Tata Indicom and BSNL, out of which BSNL is the best. The other two are even worse.

Sify goes down very often, and when you call their helpline, they just tell you that the problem will be fixed in 24 to 48 hours, and when your line goes down for 15 times a month, you will be left for a month without internet. TATA is horrible. I have written a lot about my experiences with them at the office and at home. So all that I am left with is BSNL.

The only good ISP in Pondihcerry is Airtel, and out of sheer bad luck, they dont operate in my area of residence, and at the office. The first office that I had taken in Pondicherry was in an area where Airtel served, and I was quite happy wiht the service, but now, I am stuck to BSNL.

What is so bad about bsnl? Well, there is absolutely no customer service to start with, though the lines do not go down for more than a few hours together at a streatch. I am supposed to have a 2 Mbps connection, but the speed never crosses that of a 256 kbps connection, and I dont understand why I have to pay for the limited line if I dont get the promised 2 Mbps, and why not go for an unlimited 256 Kbps. Well, thats the plan that I had in the beginning, and in that connection, no data is ever transfered, and if you download a torrent file or something with quite a number of data connections, meaning if your computer connects with more than say about 50 ips at a time, and still download data at around 8 kbps or something, you will never be able to access any other website though there will be a good amount of bandwidth that is open for your use.

Airtel was really good, and I miss the service, and for this if you ask me to relocate my home for the sake of gothic art, it would be quite difficult. Why dont Airtel expand here?

BSNL, known as DoT previously, is the oldest telephone service provider. About 10 years ago the government decided to privatize all telecommunications, and thats when new companies like touchtel came up. Touchtel provided DSL way back and provided excellent services in the metros. Everywehre eles there was only BSNL or VSNL dial up connection.

About 4 years ago BSNL launched its broadband service, and it gave boradband access to rurla india where no one could think of the private broadband connections. It has a good back bone of telephone lines drawn all over the country, and that line has been used for broadband too, and therefore, BSNL did not have much to invest into, and so at a cheap cost they set up the broadband service.

The money that was used to lay these lines all over India was by charging people heavily for local and std calls. About 10 years ago, the call rates are not what we see today. It will cost you upto Rs 50 a minute if you wish to call someone who is just about 30 or 40 kilometers away from you. Now you can call all over India for a rupee a minute.

Well, when they had less investment to make, why don’t they provide a better service? BSNLs broadband is only good enough for homes where people login to check emails and waste bandwidth watching movies and stuff. Bloggers like me can do quite well with it, but not as a software guy. No, BSNL is not a good connection for a software company.

I have been downloading things from the internet for several years now, and the only internet connection that I would say is up to the mark is Airtel Broadband. I have endorsed them for quite some time now, as the connection never goes down. I have been running the internet for days and months together without stop downloading and uploading torrents of data, and now I miss airtel badly. Be it a search for crib bedding , or to download a 4 dvd software , that has been the best always.

BSNL is popular just among home users, and it wins so many award just because it serves users who dont really know how an internet connection should be, how consistent it should be in serving data and stuff. In my opinion it just sucks.

India’s very own broadband service, BSNL, which is also a major telephone operator in India, gave me real hell last night. I have a 2 Mbps plan with a 2.5 GB traffic limit per month, with unlimited transfer from 2 am to 8 am. So these days what I do is I go to sleep very early, at around 8 pm, then get up at 2 am, download what ever I want, and then take a short nap from 8am to 10am, and then get ready and come straight to the office. The things I am having to do to download stuff at 2 Mbps.

Last night, I was desperately trying to download an audio book of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and the highest download speed I could get was about 8 KBps, which is around 64 Kbps. I pay them a rent of Rs 600 per month, and they assure me a minimum speed of 256 Kbps at all times, and at night I get only 64 Kbps. How am I to sue these people? And how do I prove to court that was unable to get a speed of the promised 256 Kbps? I couldn’t download the book, and my travel today is really going to be boring.