Upon learning this new plan, I immediately rushed to the Tele-Shoppe, which serves my area, to get a connection. I was given an application form to fill up and submit. A demand note was printed and I was asked to pay to the amount. Upon payment, I was told that an engineer will come and setup my connection within a week.
After a week when nobody turned up at my house, I went to enquire and was told to wait for one more week. This continued for four weeks. I had enough! From the lineman, I came to know the engineer who was to setup my connection was on a long leave and hence the delay. I met the Divisional Engineer (my fourth visit to his office) and requested him to handover my modem and login credentials as I could setup the connection myself. After pondering for a while, he decided to fulfil my request.
I had earlier read the installation manual on the web. I just followed the instructions and was online in no time. My bandwidth was supposed to be 256 kilobits (32 kilobytes) downstream and 64 kilobits (8 kilobytes) upstream. When I checked with popular bandwidth testing sites, I realized my bandwidth was actually one-third of what I was supposed to get. I replaced the telephone wire between the junction box and the modem with a spare one and my bandwidth increased to 80% of what I was supposed to get. I am sure a new telephone wire will improve my bandwidth even more but getting the wire replaced from BSNL is a difficult task. For the time being I don’t want to run around the BSNL office again.
As I explored the administration portal, I realized I was given the Home 900 Unlimited connection instead of the PLUS variant of the same plan I had asked for. Further, the web mail has spelling mistakes in my name. I’ll now have to spend a couple of weeks at BSNL office to get all these rectified.
In my last two weeks of usage, I am satisfied with the downstream bandwidth. The upstream (up to 64 kilobits or 8 kilobytes) connection isn’t good enough for video chats. I can only view the other party’s video while doing voice chat. Turning my video on deteriorates the voice-video-chat experience. BSNL needs to increase the upstream bandwidth to at least 128 kilobits to solve these kinds of problems.
There has hardly been any downtime or disconnections but the Net is slow on weekends. Nevertheless BSNL DataOne with its Unlimited plans fares better than its current competitors’ plans in terms of value for money and internet experience.
If BSNL cares to improve their customer service and increase their upstream bandwidth, they are going to kill the competition, end with customer delight and laugh all the way to the bank! It will be a win-win situation for both BSNL and its customers. BSNL, are you listening?