We purchased an apartment in a developing area(Military Dairy Farm Road, Old Bowenpally) of Hyderabad. My ISP options were BSNL(Thanks, but no thanks), Airtel(Crooks who provide good service at the cost of bleeding you) and ABC Broadband.
I chose ABC Broadband since I had tried it out on experimental basis at our home at Kolkata and was satisfied with it.
Navigating through ABC Broadband’s plans take a Ph.D. There are many plans to suit individual requirements. While the plans are easy to understand for a tech-minded person like me(bottomline, I know how many GBs I need per month), I feel that the general populace will be boggled.
Filling the contact form on ABC Broadband’s website is absolutely useless. For 1 week, there was no response. After a week, I called their toll-free number and action was promised. Sure enough, next day I saw a lot of action.
I received 5 calls from 5 different sales-people, each wanting to snag my account. Clearly, some of them were stepping outside of their assigned territories and did not care about making enemies amongst their own ranks. All for a couple of hundred in commission.
Not only this behavior stuck me as very unprofessional, it also established that the only way to get future support from ABC Broadband would be to call them. For an ISP, they clearly don’t check their email.
Don’t trust the sales-person’s advise regarding what connection you need. He will push the product which earns him the highest commission. Almost none of them will advise you regarding Long-term plans which actually earn you a discount on monthly charges and installation fees.
Once you make the payment by cheque(to ABC Broadband, not to the DSA - unlike Reliance), you will start receiving emails regarding your account creation, funding etc. This is where the action stops again.
The installation folks just don’t turn up. The Sales-person becomes unreachable, the toll-free lines parrot the same information. It took cancellation threats from my side to get a installation-tech to call me. It took a further 3 days of appointments and last minute cancellations by the tech-guy before he arrived.
He arrived without carrying a drilling machine. The guy actually expected to get the wire into my house through an open-window and leave the window open for the rest of wire’s natural life. Apparently, like Polio, Mosquito and Malaria have been eradicated from India. Or maybe ABC Broadband technicians live in Zurich.
Another 3 days later, the chap arrived and to is credit finished the installation near perfectly. Though there is hole in the window frame of my brand new apartment, it has been bored perfectly. The wires are beautifully tied together and the antenna mounted on a wooden pole(provided by me) is immovable.
ABC Broadband activated the connection instantly and I was on the Internet at 2mbps.
Issues:
ABC Broadband started my billing on 26-Nov-11, but I did not actually get to use the connection till a week later. ABC Broadband did not credit my account for this and basically grabbed the money for a week’s service without providing the service.
ABC Broadband offers a billing discount if you refer someone in your building and they take a connection. Well, I did(via their online form for referring a friend). My neighbor also took the connection but I never received the billing discount they promised.
At times, the ABC Broadband antenna(mounted on the roof) loses it’s connectivity and I get disconnected. At times, this happens so frequently, that you get bugged with the repeated web-based login that you have to do. My advise: lodge a complaint, wait it out. The problems do get rectified eventually, just not in priority.
At times, ABC Broadband’s connection to their master gateway also suffers and your Internet access becomes slower than your typing. You are still connected to ABC Broadband, speed-test reports are great - just no Internet traffic. My advise: lodge a complaint, wait it out.
Every ISP in India has redefined the meaning of the word "Unlimited". Unlimited is now Limited thanks to the magic of fine-print. For ex: my connection is a ADB549 which offers unlimited downloading and 2 Mbps. The fine-print says, the first 6GB traffic is at 2Mbps. Speed drops to 256Kbps after that.
Is this an issue: technically not. The downloading is still unlimited, just not at 2Mbps(the magical speed where Youtube HD videos play on my Plasma TV).
ABC Broadband uses a web-based login mechanism that makes it impossible to perform router-based logins. You have to compulsorily fire-up the browser on your computer to login to ABC Broadband.
ABC Broadband also appears to reset connections between 3AM - 4AM. Your computer’s Internet session with ABC Broadband will be forcibly terminated and you will have to log back in manually again. There goes downloading at night.
Tips
Though ABC Broadband limits the number of computers from where ABC Broadband will allow customers to login(controlled by MAC address), you can actually use any Wireless Router to spread the ABC Broadband connection throughout the house and enable any number of devices. At my home, I have 1xTV, 1xTataSky, 3xLaptops, 1xSmartPhone connected to my WiFi router and accessing Internet. Add my guests to this list too. I have spoken to ABC Broadband technicians about this. They say it is not a problem unless Customer starts using ABC Broadband connection as a cybercafe or does something that makes it a terrorism threat.
ABC Broadband "Rents" you a WiFi router but the connection works just fine through any router. Just make sure that the installation technician adds the MAC address of your router to the list of MAC addresses allowed for your Login ID.
The Verdict
Am I recommending ABC Broadband or not? For those living in areas not serviced by mainstream ISPs, ABC Broadband is an excellent choice. In fact, it is a much better choice than attempting to access Internet via mobile-phone-company devices. It’s priced on-par/lower than many broadband providers and if it it starts to work, then it works really well.
If it does not work, then cut your losses and fall-back in the arms of 3G/CDMA Internet access providers. ABC Broadband will refund you on a pro-rata basis, just not in priority.