FTTH : Doubts before getting a new connection.

So we had BSNL ADSL broadband since many ages however last year was the final tipping point. Fares were hiked saying we're giving you 10Mbps connection and the locak exchange set max speed only at 2Mbps. I had to fight through CPGRAMS and they said they can only give max of 4Mbps despite our house being only a stone's throw aaway fromt he local exchange, which they rolled back only after a week to 2Mbps. Frustrated with their don't care attitude I just disconnected their connection. FTTH at that time was somewhat pricey and I got no response from them a month after applying for a new connection, I left it as is.

Come today, I was just casually looking BSNL's fiber plans and saw the Fiber Basic/plus plans and I was intrigued. Turns out the local exchange had converted the security guy's booth next to the gate into a FTTH office (lol). he had this to say.

Fiber Basic/Basic Plus plans have not been authorised for this franchisee and so they arent available. Cheapest plans are some 750CUL? or the 799 100Mbps 3300GB. He added the fiber basic 450/600 plans will never come to our area.

He offers some Syrotech ONU? for Rs 3800 and does not have any options for cheaper modem-only-non-wifi equipment. He says if I buy equipment from outside, he has to upload some BSNL firmware? if it fails then he cannot register or merge? and wont work.

He says installation charge will be included with the first bill, around 500Rs or more but he cannot confirm or even give an approximate how much this will be.


So here are my questions :

• Our house is less than 500 meters from the exchange. I think our neighbor already has FTTH/ How much could the installation charges be?
• Is there any security deposit? I kinda forgot to ask him this question.
• How much of what he said about the equipment (ONU/ONT/EPON/GPON? I'm sorry but Im not familiar with terminologies used for equipments in FTTH) ? Can I get the modem equivalent outside with just a LAN port and use it with my router? I have a TP-Link archer C5 and Netgear R7000 and really dont want the shitty router they give as default.
• If I can use the model from outside, whats a cheap but decent option? If Im forced to get the 799 plan, I'm guessing I'll need a decent/ one to get the full speeds. Truth be told, I want the whole ordeal to be as cheap as possible.
• How much of the 450/599 plan being not available true? Can I switch plans to cheaper options if they're available after getting the connection? I want the 599 plan, 100Mbps vs 60Mbps does not make a huge difference in my case, I used to have ACT Fibernet with 100Mbps earlier elsewhere.

Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas!
J. Hoe

1. Security deposit is the same amount as the plan you will take.

2. In most cases, You don't have to use their ONU/ONT but I don't have experience with Syrotech. Most likely, They just have to add the MAC address and serial number to a allowlist on their equipment. In some ONTs you can set these values to anything you like and they are cheaper. Hopefully some one else who is familiar with syrotech can clarify this for you.

3. I took 1277 plan that was supposed to be 100mbps/750gb/2mbps fup but it was upgraded to 200mbps/3300gb/15mbps fup. FUP has been increased(I have already used more than 750gb and the speeds have not been reduced yet) but my speeds have only been 100-130mbps max. It might be because I live a semi-rural area that doesn't have a lot of upstream connections but idk.

4. I personally bought a xPON unit which can work with GPON and EPON instead of they GPON unit my LCO was providing me. It's Genexis 1000R and cost me about 1.9k from Amazon.

My experience overall has been between meh to positive. Since we only have 1 upstream connection, I have had 45+ hours of outage since 10th December(that's when I took the connection), Speeds to Indian servers is 100mbps more or less but speeds to international servers is barely 30-40mbps and the latencies aren't great either.

Speed needed depends on users . If you are just one or 2 users who do not simultaneously stream 4K content / download files or have some serious Media server like Plex ( via Static IP) or something , you are good with 60 Mbps .
If you download huge games of 50Gb or above go with 100/200 Mbps

799Rs for 100 Mbps 3300 GB
599Rs for 60 Mbps 3300 GB

For unavailability , you can get any plan near that price and then change it online via Selfcare(BSNL Admin Portal) . The 60Mbps is available Pan-India

The modem thing of Rs 3800 is just bluff for selling their own ONT where they have higher margins
You can get a bare minimum modem and pair it with your desired Router via Ethernet cable

Dont you have any other FTTH in your area...If yes. Avoid BSNL
Customer service is non existence, customer care on phone is of no use, for any issue either you have to visit BSNL exchange or be at mercy of there technicians/LOC + Huge initial cost when compared to Airtel/Jio.

Even the selfcare portal is mess...new plans dont appear on the portal, even if they come many times it is impossible to change the plan via Selfcare. on FTTH Speed will not be an issue..(till 100Mbps )


BSNL ADSL-->BSNL FTTH-->Airtel FTTH (My journey so far with wired ISP)

@shashankb
do the unlimited plans of both Airtel Xstream & Jio fiber actually have a fup of 3.3 TB?

@Mickey7 yes

Sorry for hijacking this thread.

Does BSNL disconnect the connection every 24 hours?

This is what used to happen on my ADSL connection in the distant past.

@rajil.s yes pppoe is redialled periodically, not sure about the time.

Crap. That was my pet peeve in ADSL days. I will stay away from BSNL due to this.

I have BSNL Fiber, Seems to be re-setting up PPPoE connection once every 12-13 hours. :/

Love Airtel for this,

I bet BSNL is probably using some crappy equipment to run pppoe-server and the resolution to some weird problem on that server is to just reboot/kill all connections once in a while. 😕| /s

From my experience so far I can tell that the PPPoE connection is reset once every 24h (Ive had it reset after 2 am mostly) . Its really annoying especially with BSNL because there are some rare IP ranges (for me ,59.96.xx.xx) which give me really good pings to international servers but it resets everyday and I have to keep reconnecting to get the same IP range again . I just need it when I am gaming , its fine otherwise.

I pulled my connection stats from BSNL's self care portal and I think their stats are off or something weird is happening.

Couple of days back, I had 23 hours of uptime on pppoe-bsnl interface in my router but in their stats the max uptime is 12 hours from few weeks back. I guess it's possible connection dropped for a second and my router didn't register that where as BSNL did.
Anyway here are the stats,