With such high speeds and current pricing, MTNL fears on loosing Triband customers who would switch to 3G dongles with a blink of an eye. (I have now switched to 3G full time and come down to 395 plan on Triband to be used as a back up.)
I'm not defending them, but for MTNL, next logical step would be to bring their Triband connections up to speed with respect to current 3.6 HSDPA before attempting to increase HSDPA to HSPA+.
But hey, it's MTNL. Anything can happen.
If MTNL doesn't upgrade their 3G speeds in the hope of losing Triband customers then it will be very stupid on their part. Mobile phone spelled a kiss of death to copper line telephones and 3G already kissing wired-internet good bye. There is NO point beating a dead horse. By holding back technology in an attempt to keep the old triband alive would be shooting their selves in the feet. People will still move out of it. If they don't offer it, then people will move to some other company.
BTW, I once emailed to all the MTNL addresses I had suggesting them to do something about their Triband speeds as it is failing to 3G. I suggested to offer higher speeds, as with 3G we have portability and higher speeds and with Triband we have neither and still I pay more for my 750kbps connection! They never replied to my suggestion!
Basically zero. 3 reasons: 1. No one is giving out hardware capable of such speeds - they still only give out 3.6 & 7.2mbit/s capable dongles. Even the fastest phone I can think of OTOMH is only 10.2mbit/s.
There is hardware available in the market and MTNL can always use that. A 21.6 mbps can be found on
ebay for as less as Rs. 2700
2. In real life, none of those networks will achieve anywhere near those being advertised, even if you got the right dongle. A safe bet would be to take the advertised speed & divide by 3 - this is based on results of similar networks in Australia & Europe. 3. All wireless mediums (3g, wifi, lte, wimax - you name it) are crap, especially with any kind of network load, and it's worse if you're indoors, especially in India because of the way houses/apartments are built here (lots of radio wave absorption).
This is a very VERY strong point. I checked these forums and I see you are right about your "divide by 3" policy. Even
TATA and Reliance users are getting only a third of the advertized speeds, at best.
MTNL has slower equipment mostly because, as a government player, it had the right to build out a 3g network ahead of the private players. I'd say if/when it upgrades it'll go to 21mbit/s equipment, but even that may not happen as BSNL & MTNL are already outlining their strategies for LTE.
Sigh, then I guess we'd have to stick with the lower speeds then. The only silver lining there is, is that it is unlimited.
Even if they migrate to 21 or more mbps don't expect much speed upgrades. They are offering unlimited plans on 3G, BSNL's 3G unlimited turned out to be a near disaster wrt to speeds as people started to download 100's of GB's hence they withdrew it.
I hope MTNL does NOT meet the same fate!
You can only expect a better experience with LTE network as the spectrum is 4 times that of 3G which is a utter joke with just 5 mhz.
What's this?
Better go for wired plans if possible...
I'm planning to go 3G next month! I'm paying Rs. 750 for a 750kbps triband. It is better to go 3G as then too it is Rs 750 per month and with theoretical 3.6 mbps speeds. Even if I get what most people here are getting, then too it will be thrice as fast.
The only reason I'd go to wired if it is a fibre optics. It's not actually copper wire but you get the point. It is blazing fast! BSNL does provide a
Fibre to home, but it costs an arm and a leg. The cheapest 1mbps costs Rs. 3000 and the fastest 100Mbps costs 84000 a month. I wonder why did they name it fibre to "home". Now which "home" pays 84K a month on internet?!
In England Virgin is already providing 100Mbps broadband and is testing 1.5Gbps services. You can read about it
here and
here.
Thank you all for your replies.