Dear All,
I purchased BSNL 3G Internet connection about two months back, which advertised a blazing speed of 3.6Mbps. Unfortunately its performance is very poor and not expected.
I took the connection with 10GB data transfer per month costing only 990 plus taxes. The total paid was around 11000/-. BSNL gave the Terracom modem free of cost.
For a 10GB data transfer, the price is really cheap compared to other operators.
However the main issue is that performance. I did some speed test at speedtest.com
Here is the result
TESTED ON 11-JAN-2011 @ 17:30
BSNL-3G
TATA broadband
FROM
TO
PING
DOWNLOAD
UPLOAD
PING
DOWNLOAD
UPLOAD
COCHIN
BOMBAY
203
1.37
0.34
82
0.53
0.63
COCHIN
SPRINGFIELD.MO
438
0.61
0.2
308
0.5
0.55
COCHIN
ADELAIDE
625
0.45
0.18
429
0.62
0.29
COCHIN
HONGKONG
444
0.49
0.19
245
0.57
0.28
PING IN ms
speed in Mb/s
The biggest issue is the latency time taken by BSNL for connecting to severs.
The Second issue is of consistency of speed & performance.
Latency
While BSNL takes 203ms to connect to a server in Bombay, Tata takes only 82 ms. The above difference could be found in all the cases (different severs across the world).
Upload speed is far less in proportion to the download speed available.
Consistency of performance It is found that BSNL 3G service do not have a consistent performance level at any given time frame. If the speed is very good at one point of time, it drastically drops to almost Zero within minutes.
It might seem that Video actually are download much faster than normal data. This is only an eye wash, since the servers might have been configured to transfer Multimedia data much faster than normal data.
Due to the above, this device or the connection cannot be used for serious work like online trading platforms that require high consistency in performance Particularly that of latency speed.
This product could only be recommended for non serious work like email checking etc. For this their 2GB data transfer plan is much cheaper, useful, with only 550/- per month.
The higher end plans do not serve the purpose and lacks the performance that is only hyped.