Ankur Gupta Online

Things have changed since I reviewed MTNL’s Broadband service some months ago here…

For the past month I have had quite a lot of chats with my friends about the ISP they are currently using and their satisfaction level with them.After that I have come to the conclusion that MTNL pips Airtel by a close margin to be judged the best ISP according to me.

Some straight facts to justify it..

MTNL is the only ISP to provide 2 Mbps on all of its plans except the unlimited plan which I think too will be upgraded to 2 Mbps soon.The actual speeds vary from 1.5 Mbps to 1.8 Mbps which is pretty good. Now a direct implication of this is that you get faster browsing speed along with damn quick downloads.This is a boon for people with the latest launched TriB 749NU which has night unlimited downloads.

MTNL’s service has improved compared to its past and is almost at par with Airtel in most parts of the city.Though MTNL’s customer care service sucks as usual and this is the department where Airtel beats MTNL by a large margin.But MTNL still has wider coverage than Airtel in the city.

One of the most important things to look at before choosing an ISP is the plans it offers. MTNL has a wide variety of plans and it gives better cost/MB than Airtel in most cases and not to forget the abovementioned 2 Mbps on all plans making it a favourite choice with customers.

MTNL introduced its WiFi enabled router a couple of months back which added another feather to its cap.

According to me MTNL offers the best Plan ie. the recently launched TriB 749NU plan as with this plan you can download around 5-6 GB of data easily in the night compared to 2.5 GB that you can download through unlimited plan in the whole day.But that will change when MTNL decides to upgrade the speed of unlimited plan to 2 Mbps.When this happens it will put other ISPs offering 128kbps and 256kbps unlimited plans to shame and force them to upgrade the speed or lower the price thus benefiting the customers immensely.

Hence I think MTNL is the king of ISPs at the moment and other ISPs need to pull up their socks to catch up with MTNL.

Coming soon a post related to solutions to common MTNL Broadband problems…stay tuned…

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Its almost 3 years that I have been using MTNL Broadband service ie.Triband.

I opted for this Broadband service as soon as it was launched.So I am in a pretty good position to review it..

Though I am satisfied with the service but that satisfaction is only superficial as you will get to know later.

I am looking at three important aspects which are the base of a broadband service

• Speed : Lets come to this aspect first because this is what most of you might be interested in.I have been getting speeds of around 220Kbps from the time I had signed up for the service.The speed remains almost constant and you don’t get any burst of speed.The ping response times are decent though a bit on the lower side making the browsing a bit slower.And as for the 2mbps thing….MTNL has duped a lot of customers for this speed as they haven’t given this speed to TriB_500Combo Plan subscribers even though it is not an unlimited plan.The main reason that I see is that…this plan is the most attractive of all the plans that MTNL is providing and hence this plan must have been opted by most number of MTNL Broadband subscribers.Thus by not giving an upgrade to this plan they save a lot of bandwidth.In the second week of January they did give the speed upgrade to all the subscribers and at that time I managed to get 1.8mbps…that’s pretty decent.But for the datacaps that MTNL has on all the plans that have 2mbps speed,its like giving a Ferrari to the customers with only a litre of petrol! So that leaves the customers with the option of using more bandwidth thus benefiting MTNL…
• Service:The service seems efficient and you can get a new connection within a week at the most unless the service in your area is very bad.After the installation the going is pretty smooth ,if your connection is down then it is usually repaired withing 48 hours but the good work by MTNL ends here.If you have any other problem like speed problem etc. it will not be solved unless you are ready to call them for 15 days at a stretch to get on their nerves.The phone support is quite good but they too have limited knowledge and can only solve your major issues.
• Availability:This is the area where MTNL scores heavily as it has the widest network of its copper cable throughout Delhi and hence can provide broadband connections to all of them.But that might change when more connections are booked and they reach saturation point.

So that brings us to the end of this review.So even though MTNL is an ISP  better than many but still it has its downsides and it does not care about finer things where is loses out.

Hence I would give it 6/10.

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The New Year for me began on a sad note when I got to know that MTNL had not upgraded its plans to 2Mbps as promised and also advertised about it in the leading newspapers.

The service from MTNL regarding its broadband has been pretty good atleast in my area…but this has certainly disapointed me.The free data trasnfer monthly limit too was not upgraded which I guess would surely not come under “technical feasibility” as proposed by MTNL.

When contacted at customer care MTNL gave a very cold response that in 3-4 days this speed upgrade would be done as there is some technical problem.In that matter BSNL has done a great job by testing the feasibility of 2Mbps before 1st Jan so as to  make sure it was ready for the speed upgrade on 1st Jan itself.And from early reports that I have got, BSNL users have started getting speeds close to 2Mbps.

Well lets hope that MTNL pulls up its socks and fulfills its promises before its time consumers start ditching their broadband connections.

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