I bought my PC in early June and was looking for an affordable 256kbps unlimited connection. BSNLs unlimited offer was coming to an end by June and I decided to go for BSNL if the offer is extended but fortunately or unfortunately BSNL did not extend the offer. Excluding the local players, who dont have a good track record for the promised speed or support, none of the plans from Sify, Reliance, Tata or Airtel enthused me. Normally I lookup MouthShut before I make up my mind but luckily this time around I didnt and I am glad for that. Otherwise I would never have gone for Iqara what with the poor reviews that it got from MouthShut community. Since I download a lot the Iqara Angel Night Surfing Plan which allows for browsing between 10pm and 10am on all days except on sunday when you can browse the whole day and priced at Rs. 551/- interested me. In the first week of July I called up Iqara Customer Care and a guy turned up the next day and after paying the Rs. 1500/- (Rs. 750/- towards installation charges and Rs. 750/- towards one time modem rent)non refundable charges along with the first month in advance charge of Rs 551/- and filling the necessary forms I got the connection within seven work days as promised. The connection was via cable to a Motorola modem and then to my system network card. Now I dont know if it is technically a leased line but it is as good as a leased line. I always get a constant download speed of 30kb and in almost one and a half month of usage there never was a downtime or drop in speed. As for paying the monthly charges someone from Hy-Tech Services, seemingly channel partners of Iqara, called me and turned up and I paid the amount. The next day I got disconnected and on calling the customer care was informed that the payment was not updated and I have to wait until next day as they dont work on a Sunday to sort it out. I was also told that I can pay the amount online through a Visa or Master credit card. I then called up Hy-Tech Services and luckily for me they were working on a Sunday and after asking my Iqara login and password they assured me that the connection will be restored in half an hour and the connection was indeed restored.
If you are in Hyderabad and looking for a good affordable unlimited 256kbps connection and if the 12hours a day is ok with you then go for Iqara. If you want to be online 24hrs then they have a 256kbps plan with a download limit of 1GB around Rs. 500/- per month. Now if only I could get the unlimited 24 hrs!!! Some wish thinking huh?
Bandwidth Speed Test results from https://specials.zdnet.co.uk/misc/band-test/speedtest50.html
Your line speed:
229.6 Kbps
28.1 K bytes/sec
# download start time: 1125286214185
# download end time: 1125286215962
# download time: 1.777
# download size in thousands of bytes: 50
# estimated line speed (K bits per second): 229.6
# estimated line speed (K bytes per second): 28.1