The BSNL advertisements imbibes the word’speed’ in your mind. However the dialer takes its own time to’boot’. That is, once you’ve inserted the modem, it takes about 5 seconds for the software to appear on your desktop, then the software performs various operations in following order -
Device Detected - Starting - SIM Ready - Reading SMS - Searching - UMTS/HSDPA/EDGE/GPRS
The whole process on my Windows Vista machine takes about 20-45 seconds. Note that the signal strength is very good in my area and I usually get 5 bars.You’ve to click on the second tab(circular arrow) and then on the’Connect’ button to make the dialer connect to the service. However it also takes about 5-10 seconds depending upon the signal in your area. You don’t have to enter username or password as it is pre-configured in the dialer.
Performance:
This is where BSNL disappoints big time. After the connection, the dialer goes into idle mode. For example in above screenshot the’Received Speed’ shows’0 KBps’ which means there’s no data being exchanged between your computer and server. I get that 3/5 times upon connecting to the Internet.
Speeds: The download speed I get is anywhere between 10 KBps to 300 KBps. I’ve read reviews on the Internet from subscribers in Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad that they seldom get speeds more than 200 KBps.
Reliability: I can’t rely on BSNL 3G for important downloads(FTP transfers, for example). The speeds will remain steady at 90 KBps for few minutes and then suddenly drop to 0 KBps the next moment, most of the time resulting into incomplete downloads.