Tag Archives: Airtel Broadband

Would Airtel Broadband respond to new plans from Reliance Broadband?

Reliance now has FUP free unlimited 1/2/4mbps plans throughout India. They arrived with little fanfare but could define the wired broadband market in the coming months.

As of now, no national internet service provider has plans that can match these. Almost all the broadband plans available to consumers in the market are linked with in most cases laughable data transfer limits.

Airtel broadband is of course has some of the worst plans in the market today. They are also one of the largest private ISP operating in the country and hence are likely to be affected the most.

Let’s compare the offerings from the two company:

Reliance Broadband 4mbps unlimited data transfer for Rs. 1099 plus taxes per month
Airtel Broadband 15GB at 2mbps 256kbps after 15GB for Rs. 1099 plus taxes per month

Would airtel respond to these plans by launching comparable plans? Seems unlikely. But they would be forced to if a sizable number of consumers apply for a disconnection pointing on Reliance as their reason for the same.

First step in getting rid of airtel broadband?

First step in getting rid of airtel broadband?

Got myself a BSNL Broadband connection. I researched enough and it does look like a reasonable alternative.

There are issues of course. It took them 15 days to get me connected. Actually they took 14 days to collect the documents and initial payment. Connection was delivered and enabled in just one day!

Problems right now? Speeds are not good. I plan to enquire about the slow speed problem tomorrow. Hopefully they would at least deliver 80% of the advertised speeds.

BSNL does look like a good alternative to me right now. I got a direct number to their broadband guy who handles the things in the backend. Wiring quality seems to be pretty good based on the values shown in modem backend.

Now, the big question is… When to apply for disconnection of my airtel broadband connection!

Airtel Broadband: 80GB is the new 150GB

This post is largely based on Airtel Broadband plans for Delhi NCR region. They have different plans in different parts of the country. They tend to offer better plans where competition is strong. Like in Hyderabad where Beam is doing an excellent job of killing their market share.

I have been running an online protest asking airtel to launch plans with more bandwidth. Until few days ago, they had some plans offering 150GB data transfer at speeds of 2mbps and 4mbps.

Airtel sort of responded with some new plans. They now have plans with 175GB data transfer limit.

This might look like a minor victory but turns out it is not.

175GB is available only on 8mbps and 16mbps plans. These plans are of course expensive (Rs. 2599 plus taxes for 8mbps 175GB). There is no option to get a 175GB plan with 2mbps or 4mbps speeds.

Here lies the bigger problem…

Airtel also went on to showcase their evilness as they removed the older 150GB plans. In fact, the best available plan at 2mbps and 4mbps available today offer a data transfer limit of 80GB. Almost half of what they had before. You simply cannot get a plan with more than 80GB data transfer for less than Rs. 2500!

There is more bad news…

Airtel simply does not have the network quality to offer 8mbps/16mbps in all areas they are currently serving. Their wiring in my area for example does not support these speeds so I am unable to upgrade to their 175GB 8mbps plan!

Thankfully, they are allowing me to continue with my old plan (150GB 4mbps) for the time being. But if I am to apply for a new Airtel Broadband connection today, the best they have on offer to me is an 80GB plan at 4mbps. This probably applies to most regions where they offer their services in the country today.

Of course, on all these plans, the problem with random SmartBytes problem is a pre-existing condition.

Things to know when applying for an Airtel Broadband connection

If you are applying for a new airtel broadband connection, there are some things you should know. Current airtel broadband subscribers are suffering from these issues for a long time now and we can see no change in company’s policy to fix these.

Airtel is largely a marketing company today. They have outsourced pretty much everything so you end up dealing with different companies when you subscribe to their broadband service. For example, Beetel is responsible for hardware. You have to buy your modem/router/telephone-instrument from them if you need them at the time of connectivity. Alcatel-Lucent is the company responsible for their network. So you deal with them when the wiring guys come to your place. They are also the ones that visit you when you face any problem with your connection.

Airtel Broadband does not have purely unlimited plans. Sure, all of the plans available are unlimited in nature. But none of them offer advertised speeds permanently. All of the plans have a fair usage policy limit and the speeds are degraded massively after you cross that. Most of the plans drop down to 256kbps though they now have some high end plans offering 512kbps speeds after FUP limits are crossed. Surely, they do highlight it properly on their website now… But this happened only after TRAI enforced a regulation asking all ISPs in the country to be clear about the plan details.

Airtel Broadband limit torrent speeds during day time. They do not admit it. They do not highlight it on their website. They do not respond to complaints related to it. But it is there. You would get shitty speeds on airtel connection during the day time. Speeds are usually awful between 10am and 10pm.

Airtel Broadband has a long history of blocking websites for no apparent reason. When the courts direct them to block certain blogs on Blogger, they have in the past blocked the entire BlogSpot domain. Just recently, they had blocked YouTu.be domain without any logical reason. They do not publish any details about the sites/services blocked on their network on their website. They do not respond to complaints related to the either.

Airtel does not highlight the upload speeds on their broadband connections. The company representatives say that they cannot guarantee anything when it comes to uploading speeds. But generally the upload speeds are around 0.8mbps for packages with speeds 1mbps and higher (This is a technical limitation of the networking technology they use). This also applies on their 8/16mbps plans. The company has just launched FTTH based broadband plans with speeds of up to 100mbps. They are yet to respond to my query related to upload speeds on these new plans. I hope they are more generous on their fibrenet plans as the network is capable of handling faster speeds and users are still restricted to a certain data limit at advertised speeds.

Airtel’s new found love for high speed broadband plans

We have long criticized airtel for sticking to low speed plans on their wired broadband platform.

However, in the recent times, the company has suddenly changed their complete strategy and they are increasingly launching high speed broadband plans in the metro cities.

This is however coming at a huge cost to their customers. Speeds are increasing no doubt, but they are coming with smaller data limits.

There was a time, when airtel was selling a 2mbps unlimited plan with no fair usage policy for around 3000 rupees. We have nothing like that available today. You get plans ranging from 3GB to 175GB. Higher speed plans with same data are priced higher. Airtel messes up the situation by not offering higher capacity plans at slower speeds.

They have just launched FTTH based plans in Delhi NCR. These plans are available at speeds of 16/40/80/100mbps. However, each of the plan has a rather embarrassing bandwidth limit:

100mbps plan comes with 175GB FUP
80mbps plan comes with 80GB FUP
40mbps plan comes with 80GB FUP
16mbps plan comes with 30GB FUP

I cannot subscribe to 16mbps plan with 175GB FUP to save money. They are forcing me to pay the premium for both speed AND bandwidth.

In any case, what is the point of having a high speed plan like this when you can finish up the available data within a matter of minutes? You can consume 30GB data at 16mbps in just around 250 minutes. If you are uploading at the same time, you can do it faster. 175GB at 100mbps can be consumed even faster in around 233.3 minutes!

Also… how many web services out there really require speeds these high? I would imagine downloading high definition videos. Do you really want to download a Blu-ray movie from the internet if the download itself is going to cost you around Rs. 750? This is assuming you are downloading a 25GB movie on the 100mbps plan.

Airtel wants me to believe that speed costs money. They fail to give documented proof that high speed plans cost them more money. What I got from the interview on MediaNama indicated that the company is using the excuse of upgrading the network to offer higher speeds as an expense justifying charging more for higher speed plans. That does not really mean that downloading 1GB at 100mbps is costing airtel more money than download the same 1GB data at 2mbps.

I understand airtel needs to recover the money for their investments in the network. But they really need to find a better way to do that. Why cannot they look at the long term benefits and create an ecosystem that encourages the user to go for more expensive plans? Stop charging a premium for every GB of data downloaded through your network. Increase your ARPU by making bandwidth cheaper encouraging your customers to go for better plans. Right now, they are squeezing folks like you and me forcing us to look at alternatives.

I seriously cannot wait for Mukesh Ambani to launch his LTE in Gurgaon. If the rumors are true, they are going to offer bandwidth at really affordable prices. And that alone might finally push me to discard my airtel wired connection and switch to a wireless one.

Update: here is something funny pointed out by @mgcarley

Airtel’s new found love for high speed broadband plans

Airtel is charging less for one of the FTTH package compared to the DSL alternative. I imagine this is a mistake from airtel. Mistakes on tariff pages is a usual occurrence with airtel. I would not be surprised if the FTTH plan prices are changed in the next couple of hours!

Airtel SmartBytes is nothing but a scam on their customers

Airtel SmartBytes is nothing but a scam on their customers

Airtel Broadband remains one of the largest private sector internet service provider in the country. I have been their customer for many years now. And I have recommended their service to friends and family for most of that duration as well.

First few years on Airtel were amazing especially compared to my experience on other ISPs like Sify Broadband. Sify incidentally has not improved at all and consumers today face the same problems I used to face back in the early 2000s.

As for Airtel? Things changed when they introduced a fair usage policy on their connection few years ago.

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Couple of problems with airtel right now!

First… Their EDGE network simply does not work on my phone. It is not working at my place. I have traveled locally a bit and it does not work at all anywhere I went. I have pinged them a couple of times, they continue to say that they are looking into it.

Couple of problems with airtel right now!

Update: Working now!

Second… Their Smartbytes page has not been showing ANY information for my account for a couple of days now. Without it, it is hard for me to keep an eye on my usage. I do not want to get FUPed this month like I got last month.

Couple of problems with airtel right now!

Update: I have been told that Airtel Smartbytes is not supposed to show the usage at all. In fact, I was told that it is impossible for this section to show the account usage. Freaks.