Thursday, February 15, 2007

Life in Bangalore: Internet Service Provider BSNL On The Blink

BSNL's service has been patchy the last couple of days. The day before yesterday there was no internet connection for about three hours and last evening and night for about six hours. I was told that BSNL's server for the entire city was down for that duration. In the past, service has been interrupted because of some construction where we live - the cables were inadvertently cut, we were told.

Before we moved to our current location we had Airtel and as far as I can remember, we did not have a single instance of service interruption due to Airtel's fault.

Unfortunately, where we live now Airtel is not an option. The only alternative to BSNL is Reliance, but they only provide dial-up service, no broadband.

For people who work from home all the time or through flex-time options provided by their employers, this is a serious issue. Imagine having to tell your employer you can't get your work done today because your residential internet connection is down. It is extremely frustrating. I know of at least one person who subscribes to both BSNL and Reliance in order to have back up on the days like yesterday or day before when BSNL went on the blink for long stretches of time.

BSNL is apparently migrating all of their customers to some kind of better service (don't have the details), so hopefully breaks in service will be less of an issue moving forward. But what is comforting for now is that there is someone to answer the phone at my local BSNL office when I call to complain and there is someone to tell me what the problem is and how long it'll take to fix it.

5 comments:

Chakra said...

Seems that BSNL sucks in Chennai as well. My folks are having probs in the last few weeks and their customer service personnel are still in the pre-liberalisation days.

remainconnected said...

Sujatha,in that case try for the Airtel Wireless during the hours when your BSNL services are down.
Airtel Wirless is a bit costly but if you go for a corporate connection, the company/your employer would bear for the expenses. So in that case, at least for the downtime hours from your regular service provider you have a steady backup and your work is not interrupted. Methinks though,for me when at home,it works that way as I need net connectivity 24/7..

Anonymous said...

You can use Airtel GPRS to help out during down times in BSNL(i use that).Its not broadband but may help u.You can instantly activate GPRS in airtel for rs.20/24hrs.I dont know whether this scheme available in bangalore(its available in TN).

Anonymous said...

Worst Internet Service Provider

Sathya Sekar said...

I beg to differ. I have had BSNL in Bangalore for the past 2 months and find the experience extremely satisfying. The best thing about it is the unthrottled download speed we get. I have the 256kbps conn with happy hours. Download simply blazes - usually over 200KBps and always over 100KBps. Having had Airtel till about a year back, I can definitely say that I could never get such speeds with Airtel. Yes, there are occasional hiccups, but overall I would recommend it to anyone.