Want Broadband In Bangalore

Hello everyone!

I've just moved to Bangalore and am staying at Indiranagar at present. I would like to know your recommendations for the best broadband connection to take that will satisfy the following requirements of mine:

1) I need a night-time unlimited plan as I won't be at home during the day.

2) As long as the plan is night-time unlimited, a monthly data limit will do but a daily download limit will not be appreciated.

3) 'Night-time' should not start from the middle of the night! 😉 10pm onwards (or even earlier) would be ideal.

4) At least 256 kbps is required (though I'd like to know your recommendations for 64/128 kbps as well). 256 kbps means I should get around 25-30 kBps at all times.

5) Modem rentals and other hidden costs should be minimal.

6) I need a stable connection!

7) P2P software ports must not be blocked under any circumstances. I plan to download massive amounts of data! 😀

I know I might be aiming a bit high but I'd certainly appreciate all the help I can get. Please give me your recommendations based on actual usage only and not hearsay.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Andrew

You can try BSNL. They have 256kbps unlimited download plan for ~1k. You can expect to get 80 - 90% of promised speed on P2P.

Andrew, my current ISP is Airtel for which I consider pretty impressive for two reasons. Ofcourse the opinions may vary.1) They have 4 hour service guarantee and if a faulty service is not repaired in 4 hours, you will get refund of 100 bucks. However I never had even one minute of downtime with them yet. 2) Also not even a single ISP I know and used will give you 256 Kbps upload speed for a 256 Kbps connection. Usually it will be 96 - 128 Kbps. But Airtel helped me to improve the torrent ratio with that 256 Kbps unlimited connection. Whichever ISP you select, I advise you not to go for Hathway. I have been calling them since Oct 4th, and it's such a pity that their Managers are not capable of making a decision of whether to give a refund or not to ? Their sales person gave me a false information that anywhere in the place, which I was staying at that time, they could shift the connection. He was such a good sales executive that he convinced me to opt for 6 months pre paid plan. Considering the news (may be wrong) that Hathway is from Star group, I decided to go with it and paid 6 months in advance. That was worst decision I ever made. I shifted to a house around 500 mts away and they couldnot provide me the connection. A negative feasibilty report came after one week. And Satish, the Technical manager told me that I will be getting refund, and I just need to talk to Billing Department. After one week of calls, they promised me Rs.2600 as the refund amount which will be paid on Nov 15th. Now I am into a pity loop with in the departments. Mr. Chandrashekar , the Billing/Refunding Manager couldn't make a decision and asked me to call Mr. Arun Rao, the Sales manager (Business Development Manager). Now after 6 days of calls, I finally got to talk to Mr. Arun Rao, who again redirected me to Mr. Ramesh who is the Accounts Manager there. After talking to Ramesh, (who was kind enough to attend my call midst of meeting..How serious is such a meeting!!!), he told me to call Mr. Chandrashekhar and said he is one who must make the decision. BTW, all the managers will be in a meeting, whenever you want to talk to them. So you can hereby guess the efficiency of such managers to make a decision in such a medium level ISP. I must add, my local ISP was far better. I believe Hathway wont go much longer. My plan will end only on January 31 and they took back my modem already, after promising the refund. And my big lesson learned, never go for the prepaid plan with ISPs 😛

yup, go for either the BSNL 256k unlimited or the Airtel 256k unlimited

Will add my support for Airtel as well, been with them nearly 2 yrs now and reliability is what really stands out with this ISP.You get 200-220kbs on their 256k packs. Thing with ADSL is you cant be more than 1.5Kms from their DSLAM or the speeds and performance will go down. They won't sell you a package if they don't think they can serve you. You can only imagien the amt of ppl that happen to be over that limt but have to endure thier local ISP since there is not other alternative available.Oh and stay away from Tata Indicom, they are more expensive and not that good.

Thanks for the help everyone! But can you please let me know what exactly is the total bill amount I can expect per month (including plan fees, modem rental, taxes, hidden costs etc.) for the Airtel/BSNL etc. plans?

Also, doesn't any ISP offer night-time unlimited type of plans in Bangalore?

- Andrew

Total would be 1100 (+- 100) in case of BSNL / Airtel. That is because of 12% service tax.And +-100 is bcause you can choose to buy modem outright instead ofrenting it and you choose to have/not havea voice plan alongwith ADSL line.For exact price, give a call to BSNL and Airtel CC.

by all means go with airtel...have had it for 3 years, just had 1 hr down time in 3 yrs..will cost u around 1100

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I have almost decided to go in for Airtel but I just wanted one last opinion - How is Hathway's 512 kbps 'Blast' night-time unlimited package? Does anyone have an idea about this ISP in Bangalore?- Andrew

I was a Hathway Customer once. Had a hard time explaining that 70 % of the promised speed isnt good enough. But they seem to think that 70 percent is good enough and acceptable. So if u go for the package u would actually get around 360 kbps. If that is good enough for u, then go for it. Alternatively you could go for Airtel. On a 256 kbps connection i have regularly got 240 kbps atleast. From the next year BSNL promises speeds in the range of 1 to 2 mbps. Airtel would match anything that BSNL has to offer and probably even better it. Also there is this IPTV rollout due from Airtel. Now decide for urself.

dips0502, its minimum 80% by law now...so you can take them to court ( consumer or civil as you wish 😉 )

Hey Linuxguy, where wud i find info on this law ?

Its a mandatory guideline set down by TRAI. It has come out recently - a couple of months ago I guess. Search the forum!

it's not a law. i doubt if it could be made a law.

Well, it could very easily be made into a law here, but who would bother to implement it? B)BTW, I have signed up for an Airtel connection. Thanks to everyone who posted their recommendations! However, the start wasn't too auspicious as the technician came yesterday but despite around 3 hours of fiddling couldn't get the link to stabilise. Finally he left muttering something about the modem/router (he tried one each from UTStarcom and Beetel) being faulty. I don't know what the problem is but I certainly hope this is not a portent of things to come!- Andrew