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.