Webaholics

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.

Pondicherry is not a big city. It is more of a tourist spot, and a place wehre politicians fight for their superiority within their 1 KM zones in which they would be elected. I have never cared to learn what it is called in English, but in Tamil, they call it Toguthi. Well, so, the only standard ISP in Pondicherry just like in most parts of India is BSNL, and both at my home and at my office I am stuck with BSNL broadband, since the only other good one available is Airtel and it has a very very limited coverage here in Pondicherry.

Untill a few months ago, the connection at my home used to give problems every once in a while, and I used to get heavy bills for the usage though I doubt that I have used it much in those days, but right now, with the unlimited connections both at home and office, there is hardly any downtime.

Untill recently. At the office, for the past few days in the afternoon hours a strange phenomenon is occuring when the internet goes off every 150 seconds and comes back after every 150 seconds. This simply acts an an on off cycle with a frequency of 150 seconds. I got fed up with this today and went directl to the exchange, and they asked me to bring the modem stating that it si a modem problem. Bloody hell, a modem will not act like this, it is the problem of the bloody port to which our line is connected.

They are just refusing to check it, and when I came back to the office I found that net is working without the breaks, but with latency of upto 5 seconds per ping. I wonder how that works, there is a delay of 5 seconds or over 5000 ms for every request that is sent every second. Maybe the people programmed ubuntu know what they have been doing, and its correct.

Well, what is the best way to get connected to the internet? People these days do say that there will be satellite downlinks all over India in the next 2 years, and India would be the next server farm, and that you will find one in every home. If BSNL doesnt improve its service, people will start hosting their servers on BSNL, and that would come down as another black mark for India. The Land of Bad Servers.

I have been using the same modem for about a year now, and for the past few days since I got my unlimited data transfer internet connection, I am surprised at the work that it is doing. Im downloading all sorts of stuff, and my computer is plugged to a 2 hour backup power supply as well, and Pondicherry not being a very bad place wehre power goes down for over 2 hours at a streatch, the computer and the modem have literally been running for over 2 months at a streatch now since july 1st when my plan changed to unlimited 512 kbps from 2 Mbps limited.

If you are outside India, you might laugh at this cos probably you might be on a 10 Mbps connection while reading this, but in India owning a 512 Kbps connection is like owning a Rolls Royce. I sit before this computer for about 6 hours a day, and therefore the AC runs here for 6 hours a day, and for the remaining 18 hours, the door is locked, and so are all windows, and the heat is almost unbearable when I enter the room in the evening after office. No AC, no ventilation, and all the heat that is released by the cpu and the modem have no means of getting out of the room.

Well, anyways, I am quite happy with the performance of the modem, as I know that the computer has to perform, after all it is a server quality cpu that I have got, and the monitor is always turned off, as I use it only when I am working on the PC. The modem is working in its full effecienty round the clock for the past 2 months, during which time it has not been turned off even once, and BSNL too has been able to supply data all this while (i think i am sure that there has been no downtime or anything), though at the office it is a different story.

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?