After I was pissed off with recent moves of ISPs like BSNL & Airtel to really change the definitions of Unlimited internet (unlimited 2 Mbps in Airtel means you’d get upto 2 Mbps upto usage of about 15 GB and thereafter 256 Kbps - which sucks and similar capping by BSNL), I was forced to trying out an ISP which offers more. I had heard of Beam Telecom in Hyderabad, but going by most mouthshut reviews, and also by their laxity in giving a new connection: lack of promptness, not committing to appointments for new connection etc, I was very skeptical about it.
In fact the process to get Beam working reliably in my house took a good 15 days or so. It took about 7 days to get the connection itself in the first place, after some 4-5 follow-ups, although they already had Beam-box in the apartment. We thought if their sales division itself is so unwilling, how bad would be the post-sales service?
But we were only pleasantly surprised. First 7-10 days were not a good experience: when power resumed after failures, Internet Connection didn’t. We complained and we got things usually fixed on the same day - by evening, somebody was there to fix it. After insisting for a week or two, they corrected their internal box issues which was leading to this problem. They also drew power for Beam-box from my flat, just to make sure that this was not one of the causes of the issue. And yes, part of the issue was solved because of this. So when you buy Beam, make sure that the Beam-box gets proper power.
It has been about 8-10 months now since I moved out of Airtel to Beam in Hyderabad. I took 2 Mpb unlimited plan, for Rs 1000/- a month, which I feel is very economical, given that their fair usage policy is very lenient. The speed remains 2 Mbps for a good 60-70 GB, and thereafter becomes 768 Kbps - 1 Mbps, which is not bad at all!
I’m overall very satisfied with Beam’s connection speed. You can test it any time on speedtest.net. I’ve rarely ever got below 2 Mbps. At times, I’ve got upto 8-9 Mbps also.
I’m equally satisfied with their connection reliability and uptime. In last 8-10 months, I’ve seen a downtime of less than 8 hours. (May be I wasn’t using when the downtime happened, but generally speaking, its very reliable - may be only slightly less than Airtel). But we know what the packages are in Airtel!
The connection is also quite smooth & consistent. I rarely see pings timing out at all. I very often use VPN to connect to my office PC using remote desktop client, and it works quite smoothly - and I rarely every got disconnected intermittently. As we all know, using VPN is a real test of connection consistency.
Their customer support (at least first level) has improved considerably with time - but still, they’re not as professional as Airtel, and may be they don’t need to or want to. Although Customer support answers calls promptly, their processes are not so streamlined now. You may have to follow-up with them if you encounter issues, or things like initial application for new connection, shifting of connection etc. But if you have a problem like Internet Down, they usually resolve it promptly. Their field staff are not too professional and may not be too great, but they serve the essence. It took us about 10 days for the connection to shift to a location which is just 300 meters away from the old one, although the Beam-box is there in just the apartment opposite to mine, in spite of multiple follow-ups. But there was a good side to it as well: they just charged Rs 100/- for the transfer! That too was only for the length of cable they actually used.
If Beam Cable focuses on streamlining its Processes and execution, it has the potential to become a really good and prominent ISP. It has good product and service for very reasonable rates.
Overall, I highly recommend Beam Cable. Just that you’ll have to bear with them initially.