Felt like watching Bees Saal Baad(1962) after 25 years when the BSNL guy called after 7 months of applying for Data One. Day one passed and many days passed which turned into Months and I was the hapless guy calling JTO who keeps replying Just Tode din Our.
Checked out at their fault control & BB room which is a Hayden’s sixer away from my Home and to my pleasant surprise he was ready with the Router, splitter and the wires and he came along with me to Home to fix the package. Poor guy looked like he had learnt his English in Hariram ki call Centre training(courtesy:-Drji’s Engliz Dicz) and said, ” I fix instrument and you connect Net.
What started as pleasant surprise ended with a shocker bomb because I had applied for Router Type 2 with WAN and he brought the basic ADSL router?
He called his in charge and then replied, “Now I connect, you check, we change router from the JTO office for Rs 1800.00
Agreed, ” So what is the need to connect this? Why don’t we bring that and finish the job.He said, I check this, if line okay, you tell, then we change.
So we went about the installation and then he asked me to configure the router. Being quite familiar with gateway 192.168.1.1 and the admin protocol, I went about setting the Connection and finally, when I asked for the IP address, he said, just go for bridge and it will be done.
Well, it was done in matter of 10 minutes and the Net came back on my Home computer after a long Cat and Mouse Game with VSNL and BSNL ke bees saal baad wait.I took the guy to the JTO office and the JTO called up someone to cancel the Order and reissue with new router which again failed at their server end.
My having used SIR umpteen times paid off and the guy managed to collect the Router and we went straight dashing back to Home.
Now he said, “ I am giving you Router even before work order and as for the payment, it will come in your next bill. You can go ahead and install the Router. When the work order comes, you should show me and teach me how you have done it including WIFI on Laptop.
I thanked him for the wonderful gesture and offered him Tea at home. He was not keen on his mamool which was another pleasant surprise.Since I had to wait for the work order, there was no point in installing(for want of user ID and PASSWORD).
The next day, first hour, BSNL guy calls and says that work order is through and I can call their Broadband no and get the id and password.Went about the process of configuring the Router this time with PPPoE WAN miniport connection and managed to get the Net in a jiffy.
WIFI- My Second Wify
I switched on the laptop to check whether I could catch this router and found this fella roaming precariously close to my laptop with strong signal. Connected to the router in a seamless and wireless manner and I thought happy days have come again when I could use the Notebook browsing Mouthshut with Cookies and watching Cricket.
Now it was time to call the BSNL guy and just wanted to tell him, Pappu thu pass ho gaya with a Cadbury delight. Eventually, he got his lessons and I got my wireless internet back to the speed of Hare from the speed of tortoise on Tata Indicom PCIMCA Card.(Do check out my vsnl rev-Hare and the Tortoise)
More Goodies from Cookies
The Data one broadband reminded of another Sarkari gov site with poor web mail and acct setup. Had to do my own searching to get M Outlook configured as well.But more importantly you have Dataone account administration in that where you can see complete record of Net surfing enough to catch the dummies.
You also have download speed feature and this gave a whooping speed of 1.56 Mbps compared to the VSNL that I use at 1.12 Mbps.
Performance sheet of Various Broadbands tested.
*Trial Distance VSNL DATAONE Tata Data Card
Energy level 512 kbps 256 kbps 230.4 kbps
600 MB DL 5 Hrs 42 mins 4 Hrs 49 mins 17 Hrs 8 mins
Ave Speed 30-35 KB/sec 42 KB/sec 8 KB/sec
MB Plan 1000 MB 2.5 GB 500 MB
Monthly Tariff** 750.00 500.00 375.00
KB/sec-Kilobits per sec kbps-Kilobytes per sec(Many confuse between the two)
1 Mbps=1000 Kbps=0.125 MB/sec= 125 KB/sec
Performance depends on various other factors such as System configuration, ADSL line, TCP/IP and DNS settings and may fetch variable results on different computers.
*Does not include taxes and cess.
The most significant joy of my new marriage to BSNL after the prolonged recourse with VSNL and subsequent divorce has been the 100% uptime for the last two weeks which augers well. In any case my BSNL fault repair service has been quite efficient(They attend within half an hour of calling them) because every time I call them, they hit a six from the next building.
The lessons learnt for me based on my experience with most Broadband services is that BSNL is worth the wait for the simple reason that it is through your phone line, they are reachable & more humane and Customer friendly than the big guys like Tata, Reliance and Bharti’s Mittal. The key is to know how to manage faults at your system end which is incomprehensible for these guys.
Bees Saal Baad, BSNL is still the best(for me).
Thanks for reading.