It is very astonishing to see so many negative reviews about Airtel Broadband. Lets share my experience in Kolkata.
Gave up BSNL 500C plan after 4 years of excruciating pain which gave me extremely frequent disconnections. Applied for Airtel on 9/11/2012 and on the very next day a guy came to my home and offered a 550 Combo plan which was then not shown on their website. However, it had only 5GB FUP @ upto 2MBPS then 256KBPS. Still decided to test it as there was NO INSTALLATION CHARGE.
On 11/11/2012, two guy showed up- one did the cable installation, that’s too very neatly. Another configured the connection. They did it without demanding anything and in a professional manner. A tips of 100 rupees was readily refused!
They started the connection and it showed 1.8 MBPS on Speedtest.net with ping of 35 ms. I was satisfied, but they were not. Repeatedly call their office as the speed was not touching 2 MBPS, ultimately promised to solve it on next day. 7 days later they called and said, they have fixed the problem. I checked, it was 29 ms ping with 2.3 MBPS bandwidth!
Since then it began. It is a rock solid and stable connection. Never the link went off- steady forever.
From then, the connection faced problems for only 2 times:
1) After 2 months of the new connection, one cable fault on Saturday. I complained on 11: 30 PM and feared the service would be down for 2-3 days. But, on SUNDAY @ 10: 30 AM, line was restored.
2) For last 2 months their DNS was facing some issues. Webpages were not opening instead of stable link light. Called their CC. Asked to changed it from Auto to Manual DNS. The problem was solved. Now even AUTO settings are working perfect.
Pros: The speed is very very stable and consistent. Page rendering and Actual Surfing Speed is very good. Even after FUP, @256 KBPS( Actually I get around 360KBPS after FUP), the surfing is almost perfect. However, download becomes a pain.
Within FUP limit, the download speed is around 280-320 KBPS and after FUP it is 25-40 KBPS.
For me, Customer care is fantastic each time. Billing is highly transparent.
Cons: Ridiculously LOW FUP limit. These days 5 GBs are not much.