I would have gone with AirTel for a broadband connection but for the fact that they blocked outgoing connections to servers on some network ports citing dubious ’’security’’ reasons.
This included tcp/6667 which is normally used for chatting via IRC. What is the point of having an always-on broadband connection if you can’t even chat online? Hathway had similar constraints as rather painfully discovered by a friend after he opted for their service, and they were audacious enough to demand 15000 rupees from him to unblock the ports! So I had BSNL’s DataOne as the only practical choice left with me.
BSNL’s DataOne is an ambitious endeavour to provide broadband services to people at affordable prices. I would say that it has largely succeeded in this except for a few irritants. The only prerequisites are a PC with an Ethernet card and a BSNL landline connection.
I have opted for the ’’Home 500’’ plan with the option to buy out the modem (at 2000 rupees, which is cheap considering AirTel’s 6000 rupees quoted for a similar ethernet modem-cum-router). This means that I can download 1GB per month (and 2 rupees for every extra 1MB) at 256Kbps and pay 500 rupees per month for the service.
I got the connection a full two months after I had applied for it online. The reasons for the delay included a misunderstanding on their part regarding my confirmation of the application, ’’no work order’’, a strike by the BSNL employees, no modems, no vehicles, etc. Even then, I got the modem only after I gate-crashed into a ’’roadshow’’ that BSNL was organising in my locality to promote DataOne.
To complicate matters further, I was given the wrong username and password and had to use a lot of trial and error before I could guess them correctly myself (it was a Saturday night and I was too impatient to wait till Monday morning). So this part of my DataOne experience was definitely bad.
The kit I received contained a Huawei SmartAX MT880 Ethernet ADSL modem-cum-router (with built-in firewall, DHCP server, DNS server, etc.), one RJ-45 Ethernet cable, two RJ-11 telephone cables and an ADSL splitter. I also received a user manual for DataOne which I found to be largely out-of-date and incorrect in important places.
Fortunately, I was still able to set up the connection myself. I am told that I would still be charged 500 rupees as installation charges even though no one from BSNL actually set it up for me. Bad.
I find that sometimes it takes a while for the modem to establish a connection and I have to retry multiple times using a browser-based administration interface for the modem. Once connected, the speeds are quite decent and it is a pleasurable change from my dial-up days.
Moreover, the phone is still free for normal calls even when I am browsing the Internet. It is still a mixed blessing though. The BSNL DNS servers are pathetic and fail many a time to locate the IP address of servers.
BSNL also does not block outgoing connections to Internet servers on various ports, nor do they have problems with multiple home PCs using the same connection for browsing the Internet.
Their cusotmer service (call 16004241600 or 1957 or 1500) was also quite courteous (even at 12:40AM after midnight on Saturday!), though they could not help much beyond logging a service request.
Huawei’s website is pathetic with awful English and their customer service is ’’patheticer’’ - they redirect you curtly for everything back to your ISP (BSNL), who in turn redirects you to Huawei.
Moreover, everything from the modem’s browser-based administration interface, to the internal ’’portal’’ that lets you to check your usage (NOT), to their websites, needs Internet Explorer to be seen properly and do not work well with a standards-compliant browser like Firefox. Shame!
BSNL gives you only one ADSL splitter though and I have not been able to find them in the market yet. Without a splitter, you hear hissing, crackling, etc. on your phone when the DSL connection is on - though it is not that pronounced, it can get irritating.
On the whole, I am happy with this connection but for the little irritants which are not that hard to overcome. It definitely could have been better though.