I am a subscriber of MTNL’s Plan-B unlimited Internet access scheme. Under this scheme, MTNL charges Rs. 3000 (of which Rs. 2000 is deposit) and a monthly rental of Rs. 700 for unlimited access. I subscribed to this scheme this year in May, and after a few initial hiccups, the service has been pretty good.
The initial hiccups occured because under this scheme, MTNL does not supply a phone instrument with this scheme. As a result, we are not sure if the dial-tone is coming or the phone is dead. This happened when the phone line went dead for a few days soon after the connection was installed. On the whole, I am very satisfied with the scheme.
I being a student, I need to download a lot of stuff from the net, and previously I had run up huge phone bills because of my online hours. But since this scheme allows us to remain online for as little as Rs 700 per month, I do not worry about the phone bills anymore.
Another good feature of this scheme (as well as Plan - A) is the MTNl’s virtual calling card can be used to make phone calls to anywhere in the world. This is also very useful for many of us (like me) who have relatives living abroad. We can use the calling card to make long-distance phone calls from this scheme. MTNL has recently started offering another useful service where you can use your telephone number as a username to configure an email account in Outlook Express. They are offering a space of 4MB for a mailbox, which is free.
I have used many ISPs in the last 3-4 years like VSNL, Mantra, Sify, etc. I have found that the level of performance in almost all of them is the same. I get speeds of upto 52kbps on all of these ISPs. The same can be said of MTNL too. The basic problem is that the quality of phone lines of MTNL is poor. The inherent noise in the phone line creates so much problems that we cannot get connected. And even if we do get connected, we are not able to use internet.
So, I would rate the ISP service of MTNL as on par with VSNL and Mantraonline, though MTNL urgently needs to address the problem of call dropping and noise in the phone line to take any sort of lead in this competitive market.