I stayed in Hyderabad for close to 5 years before finally leaving for Pune. Until 2009 having an unlimited broadband connection was dream in most of the places in India including Hyderabad. Most of the so called broadband connections followed 256 kbps norm prescribed by TRAI religiously.
I was looking for an unlimited connection for about 1500 rs per month. I found out only BSNL was providing unlimited connections at 256 kbps in those times. After few months of trials and tribulations wisdom dawned upon me that getting a BSNL connection was as easy as reaching moon!(Yes this is how they serve their customers, more on this in a different review)
So finally I was left with 2 options 1. Sify unlimited 2. Beam Cable
I decided to go with Sify as they were a known brand then and were offering 256 kbps plan unlimited for 1000 rs per month. My sufferings started from the very next day as I was not getting LAN connection blinking. After reporting it to the thug franchises and the customer care about 100 times in the folowing three days, one service engineer came to my house. After some tricks the connection was restored and I was shown a D/L speed of 25kbps which was satisfactory in early 2009.
Troubles began again few days later as web pages started taking ages to load and even a speed test was not possible at such slow speeds. Upon lodging complaint the technician arrived after 3 days .and voila.the speed was back at 25kbps. He declared that my laptop was virus infested and because of that my speeds were that slow! Needless to state that speed was back to 2-3kbps(Yes!) from the very next day.
Finally I decided to give a try to Beam cable who by then had reduced their charges for 512 kbps unlimited to 850 rs per month. and 768 kbps unlimited to 1000 per month. Once bitten twice shy, I went with the 512 kbps plan. All it took was a call to the customer care numebr. Same day in the evening a sales person arrived and took 1000 rs as first month fee and 500(non refundable) rs as installation fee. I had no option but to oblige.
To my surprise some technicians(appeared to be quite uneducated) arrived the nesxt day and installed the line and I was promised that a, id /password will be SMSed to my number in a day or 2. The SMS did arrive and I was ready to go. I was also promised that billing cycle will start only after my first logon.(I have no way to establish that because I jumped on to my laptop as soon as I received my password and id)
So far so good.Now was the time to experience the speed. Web pages were loading super fast. I tried you tube and was able to watch videos with streaming interruptions every 1-2 minute. Overall it was a very pleasant experience. I checked the speed on Bit torrent client and with good seeds my download speed went upto 60kbps.
Satisfied with what I got for 850 bucks I was emboldened and decided to call customer care for upgradation to 768 kbps plan for 1000 rs.(They promised that the plans can be changed any time and access billing will be adjusted in next month’s advanced payment.which was quite okay with me)
So as promised the upgrade happened within hours and I could check the upgraded profile against my account on their portal. Equipped with 768 kbps I tried youtube and to my surprise speed increased substatially over 512 kbps plan. There was hardly any streaming required in between. Torrent D/L speed increased to 100 kbps. and I was downloading movies almost daily.
Then came another surprise.I got an SMS from Beam that my plan was upgraded to 2mbps on the same price(1000 rs per month inclusive of all taxes). I could not believe this. But only after testing on my laptop I had to acknowledge that I was getting 2mbps afterall. torrent were doing great at 250 kbps and so were video chat and online movie watchnig.
Other good things were that Beam had a premitive trouble resolution system in place which sent out status report through email and SMS. There were sceduled down times which were informed well in advance, mostly happening between 12 am to 4 am which was hardly a worry. On an average there were 1or 2 days of downtime in a month which were not scheduled.
I changed my place 2 times in this period and each time I was charged 500 rs by Beam that I did not mind paying. Connection was established within 2 days each time I changed my place.
Overall my experience was so good that it was giving a lot of worries to me when I decided to shift to Pune. My fears came true. Pune has very little broadband covergage and no one is even 50% as reliable as Beam in Hyderabad. I wish Beam could go abd cover all the places in India