popcorn
Senior Member
I was using mtnl students account in 1996. It was text based internet and with a tweak of winsocks later in 1997 where you can use it in IE3 with win311. I used mtnl dialup till 2003 June. It was expensive as bills reached Rs. 5000 per month !! with speeds of just 33kbpsThen Sify came in my area. I got hooked broadband. (not realising what exactly broadband was). I thought internet connection with 24 hours without telephone bills is broadband. I got 32kbps for 800 rupees / month and was happy. That time Windows XP was in with say IE 5 . Sify was reasonable and affordable. I was happy and registered myself on IBF in 2005 as sifyfan.Gradually time passed and sify increased its rates. I had no choice but to stick with sify. But then came in the cable maintenance charges. Sify gave a useless antivirus called trend micro and later shifted to symantec which was better with free updates. The top reasons why I shifted to mtnl are:Sify still uses a login system which was used in 2003. If you are using linux they still give the webbased login. Thats obsolete technology.Their Windows XP dialer has a irritating popups and mandatory starting page of sify.Sify did not change when Vista was launched. They are not at all concern to update their login client for vista. Round the corner we see the Windows 7 coming. So they will not do anything for that too. They did not offer antivirus free to Vista Users. Hence its assumed that nothing is for Windows 7 users too. They have no support for Linux users and mac users.Sify has a unique problem of mac bindings. U cant use more than 1 pc at a time. If you fire their call center they wil max allow one more mac id. If you have multiple OS installed than that mac id protection is still a pain.Now coming to the plans.Their plans are the costly compared to others. The maintanence charges add the problems. The cable operater is the king when it comes to any problems. The day mtnl reduced prices in Mumbai I decided to go with mtnl. As Airtel is not in my area, Tata indicom also is not in my area, only option is to go with mtnl. This is my broadband story since 1996. I was sifyfan and now a mtnlfan (admin helped me to rename ).Sify will never change ! it will remain same as it was launched. No new plans. The higest plan is 256 unlimited plan for Rs. 899 + 150 as cable guy takes as line maintanance. Mtnl offers 512kbps at 999 + ST and best speeds and I can use as many computers I wish.Thanks to mtnl to give the independence day gift to Mumbai !