Airtel Broadband cannot give you 2mbps service

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Sunil Rikhye

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Airtel has lost its edge. I upgraded to 2mbps from 386 kbps expecting a HUGE increase in performance and be able to see non buffering youtube videos and 720HD videos. let me just say even the 480 size videos needs to buffer, 720 is just no no. I have complained 10 times in the last 45 days but the problem is not resolved even though the engineer has come to resolve the issue.When you speed check on mumbai server you get speed of 2mbps 50% of the time only rest of the servers DO NOT give 2mpbs infact speakeasy.net site gives less than 512kbps or less. I have asked them to reduce the bill amount to 512 plan for the month as that is what I have experienced, but no word on that. I am planning to shift to bsnl as Airtel has lost its technical edge. Airtel is not in a position to provide more than 1mps service but offer 2-4mbps. Thats cheating. I am not going to pay the bill and will go to consumer court for real pain and harrassment of needing to call airtel almost 10 times in the last month.Location : Pune, Yerwada
 
This is known as contention ratio. Don't believe whatever contention ratio Airtel claims to be having, I bet it is 1:50 or so for most customers. Which means that a 2mbps international circuit is shared between at least 50 customers.I have a 2mbps business plan in my office. I'm paying Rs 1299 plus tax (Rs 1460 inclusive of taxes) for 8GB download limit and 1 static IP. After crossing 8GB limit, it will be Rs 1 or 2 per MB. On that connection I never get more than 300kbps download speed during the day. Upload speed has never crossed 170 kbps. Basically paying about Rs 163 per GB to Airtel is not enough. I have called their much appreciated customer support many times only to be told that 2 mbps is guaranteed only upto their exchange and if I am getting 300 kbps when downloading from international sites like microsoft.com or adobe.com then it is VERY GOOD performance. This is a BUSINESS DSL connection, so should be getting much better download speeds when compared with the cheaper residential service. I actually believe that quality customer support and service quality of Airtel is just a hoax and nothing more than that. I am still with Airtel because of that static IP only, otherwise Reliance Netconnect broadband+ gives much better speed (particularly upload speed) at a much lower price.
 
This is known as contention ratio. Don't believe whatever contention ratio Airtel claims to be having, I bet it is 1:50 or so for most customers. Which means that a 2mbps international circuit is shared between at least 50 customers.

I have a 2mbps business plan in my office. I'm paying Rs 1299 plus tax (Rs 1460 inclusive of taxes) for 8GB download limit and 1 static IP. After crossing 8GB limit, it will be Rs 1 or 2 per MB. On that connection I never get more than 300kbps download speed during the day. Upload speed has never crossed 170 kbps. Basically paying about Rs 163 per GB to Airtel is not enough. I have called their much appreciated customer support many times only to be told that 2 mbps is guaranteed only upto their exchange and if I am getting 300 kbps when downloading from international sites like microsoft.com or adobe.com then it is VERY GOOD performance. This is a BUSINESS DSL connection, so should be getting much better download speeds when compared with the cheaper residential service.

I actually believe that quality customer support and service quality of Airtel is just a hoax and nothing more than that. I am still with Airtel because of that static IP only, otherwise Reliance Netconnect broadband+ gives much better speed (particularly upload speed) at a much lower price.

the website mentions the contention ratio as 1:15 to 1:8, as for the speed, its very possible, the CC themselves were confused between kBps and kbps-- it does happen
 
Airtel has lost its edge. I upgraded to 2mbps from 386 kbps expecting a HUGE increase in performance and be able to see non buffering youtube videos and 720HD videos.
let me just say even the 480 size videos needs to buffer, 720 is just no no. I have complained 10 times in the last 45 days but the problem is not resolved even though the engineer has come to resolve the issue.

When you speed check on mumbai server you get speed of 2mbps 50% of the time only rest of the servers DO NOT give 2mpbs infact speakeasy.net site gives less than 512kbps or less.

I have asked them to reduce the bill amount to 512 plan for the month as that is what I have experienced, but no word on that. I am planning to shift to bsnl as Airtel has lost its technical edge.

Airtel is not in a position to provide more than 1mps service but offer 2-4mbps. Thats cheating. I am not going to pay the bill and will go to consumer court for real pain and harrassment of needing to call airtel almost 10 times in the last month.

Location : Pune, Yerwada

You should call the Airtel Engineer (again) and tell him to come over and check it. Demo the youtube issue, instead of him just sitting on your computer and checking speedtest.net. Btw, did you try to see your routing to youtube? Maybe thats being messy. FYI, I live on Nagar Road, and ive used the 2mbps plan for more than a year now, with no hassles whatsoever, with youtube videos loading, even at 720p. Not to mention my speeds are always above 2mbps, more like 2.4-2.6 (Which I always thought was a 20% QoS overhead). So its puzzling to hear your problems, especially since I live pretty close to your general area, geographically speaking.
 
the website mentions the contention ratio as 1:15 to 1:8, as for the speed, its very possible, the CC themselves were confused between kBps and kbps-- it does happen

There is no confusion.

I believe the info on their site is wrong or may be it is there to intentionally mislead the customers.

---------- Post added at 08:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 PM ----------

You should call the Airtel Engineer (again) and tell him to come over and check it.

In my case, I called customer support many times. As a result an "engineer" came. He called NOC (their network operations center). They did some changes at their end and connection went down for 8-10 days. I complained again and escalated it. As a result same crappy service was restored and I got credit for downtime after 5 months due to SLA.

I called the Airtel support - again - after a few months. A new "engineer" came. He said there MAY be some problem with the wiring. So wiring was changed. Connection is as bad as it has always been. So I have given up and waiting for some new provider to launch plans with static IP.

In case of Airtel, an "engineer" is usually a 12th grade pass person with basic training. They don't know much about a PC. I got another new connection installed in my office around 3 months ago for new employees. The "engineer" who came to install the connection installed Google toolbar on the Internet explorer (without permission) on the PC that was given to him to configure the router. When I asked why he installed that toolbar, he told me "Bina toolbar ke connection slow chalta hai" 🙂

So much for their "engineers".
 
Surprising, as the person who came to install my IPTV connection seemed quite competent, atleast compared to the call center guys. After getting IPTV working, he also configured file sharing amongst all the computers, set the SSID to hidden and configured and saved WPA settings in all the comps.Also, he himself said that the Airtel help application(dont remember the name) causes more trouble than it is worth, so did not install it.But I am sure that either I was very lucky, or IPTV customers get better service as the engineer was from Alcatel and Lucent, and not some local outsourced guy(who used to come when I had only broadband and not IPTV).Surprising that business customers get a lower quality of service..
 

Their local outsourced guys who do basic DSL stuff are not trained well at all. In my case I enabled WPA on the router myself after they left. This new connection installed 3 months back is normal residential consumer connection. I have 2 Airtel DSL connections in my office now. One is with older Business DSL plan installed in 2007 and the new one is with 4mbps residential plan.Alcatel/Lucent staff for IPTV may be better trained among the lot.
 
hey nice thread...... 🙂

I have a frend who uses MTNL BB he said that at 512kbps connection he is able to watch YouTube vids without any buffering issue......

so can someone please compare this with airtel BB nd how a govt. co is able to do that nd airtel not.

according to MTNL website their ratio is 1:28.....

---------- Post added at 09:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 PM ----------

You should call the Airtel Engineer (again) and tell him to come over and check it. Demo the youtube issue, instead of him just sitting on your computer and checking speedtest.net. Btw, did you try to see your routing to youtube? Maybe thats being messy. FYI, I live on Nagar Road, and ive used the 2mbps plan for more than a year now, with no hassles whatsoever, with youtube videos loading, even at 720p. Not to mention my speeds are always above 2mbps, more like 2.4-2.6 (Which I always thought was a 20% QoS overhead). So its puzzling to hear your problems, especially since I live pretty close to your general area, geographically speaking.


is ur Qos enabled or disabled....as per airtel it should be disabled,,,,

which modem are u using....nd post ur settings.....too as screen shot here....so we can check ours with urs if thts the issue ??


thx
 
thank you all for replying , Airtel service is a good in responding however it may not be good in rectifying the problem. The speed issue is still the same and i cannot view youtube videos without buffering even at 480 res. I am seriously contemplating shifting to BSNL 4mbps plan which is for 1400 pm. Taken annualling it amounts to 14000/- with free modem which costs about 2000/- so its about 1000/- pm. FUP is 25GB which though not high maybe sufficient. Can anyone give me any feedback on BSNL service at 4MBPS ?Also Funkatrnic what do u mean by "Btw, did you try to see your routing to youtube?" I dont know about that. Ping times are 315ms though
 
thank you all for replying , Airtel service is a good in responding however it may not be good in rectifying the problem. The speed issue is still the same and i cannot view youtube videos without buffering even at 480 res. I am seriously contemplating shifting to BSNL 4mbps plan which is for 1400 pm. Taken annualling it amounts to 14000/- with free modem which costs about 2000/- so its about 1000/- pm. FUP is 25GB which though not high maybe sufficient. Can anyone give me any feedback on BSNL service at 4MBPS ?

Also Funkatrnic what do u mean by "Btw, did you try to see your routing to youtube?" I dont know about that. Ping times are 315ms though

BSNL SUX go fr MTNL much better if avil in ur area....
 
@anant.del: If he's living in a BSNL service area (eg not Mumbai or Delhi), he can't get MTNL.

@topweb: Airtel's contention ratio has historically been pretty decent - as I recall at the moment though it's MTNL at 1:14, Airtel at 1:17 then BSNL at 1:22 though some of those numbers may be out of date - although in reality, contention ratio means different things for different ISPs depending on how the service is delivered.

Legally they can't publish information (such as contention ratio) to intentionally mislead customers: however this doesn't seem to stop them in their advertising. Even then, I'm not surprised that you don't get 2mbit/s to Speakeasy.net - your 2mbit/s connection is only 2mbit/s up to the ISP's Central Office (sometimes even closer than that).

Outside their network, there is contention and you will not necessarily get the speeds that are advertised on any plan (unless it's a dedicated/leased line plan for which you'd be paying upwards of Rs40k a month for) - much less to the USA, simply because that's not how bandwidth is aggregated. When you're doing speed tests to the USA, you're not only competing with users in India, you're competing with users in Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and of course, the USA itself: the bottleneck for you being either Singapore or Hong Kong (depending on the route the traffic takes).

My experiences in NZ at the moment are similar: My line gives me full-speed ADSL2+ speeds, but I'll get about 16mbit/s to Auckland, 12 to Australia and about 6 to the USA. My torrents come in usually at up to 12mbit/s, sometimes up to 15mbit/s (I've normally got a set speed limit of 1,400kbyte/s).

Youtube still does buffer for me fairly often (even on 320p), and I'm pinging youtube.com at around 290-295ms right now (although I'm in Wellington instead of in my HomeTown right now), but ISPs are best to peer with Google in order to take advantage of their CDN (I'm sure if I was using my ISPs DNS, I might get better pings and/or less buffering, but I'm not a heavy youtuber so I don't care).

@Sunil: If anyone in India is positioned to give more than 1mbit/s service, it's Airtel. They have approximately 15Tbit/s of cable capacity available to them through at least 5 separate cable systems, which is enough to give all 1 million customers about 8mbit/s unlimited as in unlimited with no contention - EACH - and still have enough to sell to companies like mine - however, they have only lit a couple hundred Gbit/s because that's all that is "necessary": they are required to light more capacity up as the usage approaches 80 or 90%.
 
BSNL SUX go fr MTNL much better if avil in ur area....

Strangely Enough, But, BSNL & MTNL cannot be available in same area as far as my knowledge. 🙂
 
If anyone in India is positioned to give more than 1mbit/s service, it's Airtel. They have approximately 15Tbit/s of cable capacity available to them through at least 5 separate cable systems, which is enough to give all 1 million customers about 8mbit/s unlimited as in unlimited with no contention - EACH - and still have enough to sell to companies like mine - however, they have only lit a couple hundred Gbit/s because that's all that is "necessary".
Now, that's evil, isn't it? 😕
 
I think I have a dedicated line (Airtel). I have a 4 Mbps connection & regularly get 450-480 kbps download speed. Earlier when I had 256 and 512 kbps plans, I used to get what I should have got, sometimes even more. Never got less than what I paid for. I think they have laid dedicated lines in some areas, they have also installed intercom in my whole colony so may be along with that they laid the dedicated lines.Edit - Dedicated meaning not leased, but local contention 1:1. Or whatever that would mean. They told me you had a dedicated line.
 
I think I have a dedicated line (Airtel). I have a 4 Mbps connection & regularly get 450-480 kbps download speed. Earlier when I had 256 and 512 kbps plans, I used to get what I should have got, sometimes even more. Never got less than what I paid for. I think they have laid dedicated lines in some areas, they have also installed intercom in my whole colony so may be along with that they laid the dedicated lines.

Edit - Dedicated meaning not leased, but local contention 1:1. Or whatever that would mean. They told me you had a dedicated line.

You have ADSL - that's dedicated up to the POP just by default (unlike cable or metro-ethernet), but that's not what I'm talking about.

Airtel's speed and availability in Delhi is better than Airtel in some other areas of India because that's kind of Airtel's home market (North, North-East India I think). But good that you get 4mbit/s. Pity about the FUP though 🙁
 

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