Yep, it’s a FARCE all right! What with high costs, low speeds, download caps, frequent downtimes, incompetent staff….the list could go on. Even after all these years, India, dubbed an IT super power by some, has pathetic internet infrastructure. The government tried to improve the scene with BSNL and MTNL providing “cheap” broadband. Yea right. Download caps of as low as 400MB mean that unless you use the internet for less than an hour a day, you will end up paying way more than the minimum charges that BSNL hooked you with. Having just ended a 3-month ordeal with iGate, I felt that it was the appropriate time to pen my thoughts on the broadband scene.

I remember back in the day (read September 2003), I got a 128kbps Sify connection through my cablewala. I needed the speed so that I could be more efficient with my college research and even got a 200MB transfer limit which worked out to enough for my meagre usage. 50% off on Sundays was a bonus as I could download some stuff every Sunday. But I realized I could make do with a 64k connection. So I got a time bound connection. 20 hours per month with 50% after 10pm and free Sundays! That was really nice. I could do all my downloading on Sundays and browse for like an hour everday at night. It worked like a charm with very few downtimes and good support (they would actually call back to get details of the problem and then call back to check when they had fixed it!!).

Then, I left for the US of A. Got a decent connection right in my room. Library gave me 3Mbps+

When I came back in December, I took the new unlimited 64k connection that Sify had to offer. 695 a month wasn’t too bad but then again, considering the quality (rather the lack of it), it was a bit of a waste. I would get disconnected every 20 minutes or so which severely hampered any sort of large download. Yes, it worked all day…but would give up on me every few minutes. I would then have to reconnect!! Since I had it for less than a month, I didn’t care much. I decided to dump Sify for future broadband!!

I went back to NY in January and found the same connection in my room. However, after some maintenance work, they somehow upgraded my connection so that it started giving me 4Mbps regularly. I was in broadband heaven!

I came back to Mumbai in May and decided to try out the new 256k connections. I wanted ExattNet but my cablewala said it would take time. He had iGate ready so I took it. And surprise, surprise! The guy came to my house in like half an hour after I called him. Good start. For the first month, it was, dare I say, AWESOME!!! Great speeds and almost no downtime!! It was bliss!

Enter month two, and all sorts of issues begin to crop up. Firstly, I had to remind my cablewala like 5 times before he renewed my account. Then, downtimes kicked in. Their downtimes would last up to a full day and there’s nothing more frustating than having to keep checking frequently if the connection had been restored. And the worst part was that the guys manning the phone line at my cablewala’s office didn’t know shit! Once, they told me that the connection was working fine and that I should check for problems at my end. I had to go through torture to re-install my wifi network! I had set it up after days of trying and I had to re-install it. And yeah, guess what, the problem was at THEIR end and not at mine. WTF!!!! Boy was I pissed!! These jerks know nothing other than giving out wrong and inaccurate info to coustomers.

Still, I carried on with them for the third month. Just when it was time to renew my account, they had a downtime running into 2 days!! For two whole days, I had no cablenet. FInally, it was working again to my relief. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my connection worked even during the downpour on July 26, 2005. But my joy was shortlived. It promptly went off the next day. I had to wait a day before they restored it. But the connection was still erratic. To make matters worse, an international fiber optic line broke down leading to further disruption of services for a couple of days. Somehow I went on until the 19th of August when my connection finally expired and I couldn’t renew it as they only gave month long accounts. It was a day of mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, the joy of not having to deal with a crappy connection; and on the other hand, the anxiety of not having a broadband connection for a week.

Since that day, I am on dial-up. Not too good, but at least I don’t have to deal with downtimes and jerks answering customer queries. Looking forward to broadband when I get back to NY. Hopefully, I will still get 4Mbps But anything above T1 is good enough. What say? Watch out for a follow-up on this article i.e. Part II