After my terrible experience with Sify broadband early this year, I decided to stick to dialup – Reliance rconnect over FWP actually. But the idea of keeping a phone busy all day doesn’t appeal to me much even if the plan I have (Platinum) doesn’t have download caps or per minute call charges.
So today I decided to bite the “broadband” bullet once again, and registered for a Tata Broadband connection. I have already voiced my dissatisfaction over its rental plans, but relented after finding out that it has the best to offer in my area (even MTNL plans are pathetic).
Lets us see how my experience goes this time. The Tata Broadband DSA was very sincere, helpful and forthcoming, and if things goes well I would really recommend my neighborhood folks to contact this man. Unlike VSNL’s official line of installing within a week, he has asked me to be realistic and wait for at max 10-11 days. I found this kind of candour unusual for a sales guy, and am hoping that I am not disappointed with the experience for other reasons. Unlike Sify which uses totally unprofessional and uncouth last mile franchisees, VSNL provides end-to-end installation and service on its own. I find this assuring, to say the least.
Update: June 23 2005: It has been almost two weeks since I paid up, but no connection yet. Seems my naive enthusiasm was misplaced. I had called up customer care about a week back, and the agent had promised somebody would get back to me in 24 hours. OF course they didn’t. Contacted the DSA today. He apologized for the delay, and mentioned some vague excuses like “…some port problem …” etc. He promised that the installation would happen in a week. Lets see. I am not holding my breath. They are all the same … (sigh). I cannot but help comparing with the new MTNL phone connection that I had got. I had applied for a new connection on last Thursday, the phone was installed at my residence in 24 hours,and activated within 48 hours, the delay only because some really extensive cable relaying work happening in my locality. Now if only MTNL had some decent broadband plans … (sigh again).
Update: June 26 2005. Got a call from some rep from VSNL yesterday. The lady had called up to inform that my connection will be done in a week. One *em>more week! (sigh)
Update: July 5 2005. Eep. Forgot to update this post in time. I finally got the connection installed on 29th of June. So it took 18 days from paying money to getting the thing installed. It sucks, but the connection is making me happy. 
64kbps is not as bad as I thought for my needs. The router given to me sucks though – some cheap Chinese brand. Thankfully supports customized NAT rules so that I can have bittorrent and other apps working inside the LAN. However, from time to time it locks up (about once a day), and has to go through a power cycle before it is ok again. The connection has relatively been stable, and ping times are about 350ms to my server, which is nice compared to what I have been going through the last few months. Overall a strong recommendation.
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