I have been using BSNL dialup for close to 3 years now, reasons many but one of the primary reasons has been lack of choice :( Living in a small city like Jhansi, I have only BSNL as a ISP here. But still I am satisfied with its performance as I have the taste of private ISPs like Sify etc when I am at college ( cyber cafes there have Sify or HCL Infinet )
The various factors for choosing any ISP are below and also how BSNL fares in them.
SPEED:- This is primarily the major factor in choosing a ISP, atleast for people like me who like to download a lot of stuff. BSNL does not dissapoint. It has been giving me pretty useful speed all throughout the day whereas I have seen people complaining that other ISPs have poor speeds during the days but not at nights. In BSNL, this is not a problem and speed even during the day hours is good but it improves in the nights.
CONNECTIVITY :- BSNL has to improve a lot in this area. Actually my experience has been a sort of sine wave in this area. Some times the Connectivity is so good that it always connects at the first try and the connection does not drop. While there have been times where I have spent close to 10-15 min trying to connect and download that all important mail but to no avail. I guess that the BSNL local folks increase their capacity once in a while but due to the heavy demand, it agains becomes insufficient and being a government agency ... it again takes a lot of time to increase the capacity.
GETTING THE CONNECTION:- This is the part where I have had to suffer the most. Getting the initial connection or getting a renewal is a real pain in you know what. Just keep running around in the local Telephone exchange, sometimes buying the form, sometimes depositing the fees and sometimes getting the form passed by the officials. I wonder why cant they launch easy to use CD packs like other comanies?
TARIFFS:- This is the clincher as far as I am concerned. BSNL offers the lowest tariffs of them all, the 100hrs started pack comes only for Rs 500/- and the best part is .... free surfing from 11pm to 6 am ( coupled with a 10 min pulse to ISP in the nites thx to BSNL again :) I surf at just Rs 7.20 / hr ) Also surfing is free on Sundays whole day. This is partly the reason I logon usually at nites .... and remain there the whole nites as well :)
SUPPORT:- No support at all.... there isn;t a dedicated help team sort of thing here, although the local exchange lists a Internet Help Number, normally it remains busy or the person answering the call knows less than you. Once BSNL changed its POP/SMTP server’s IP’s and I had to spend 3 days running around to know the updated addresses. The poor chap at the helpline did not even know what were POP and SMTP ??
Overall, my experience has gone from being satisfied to utterly frustrated .... but still I am reasonably happy with BSNL given the rates and speeds that it offers. Unless I come across a Broadband service at cheap enough rates ... I will stick with it ....