Ankur Gupta Online

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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As promised I am back with my very own review of my new car Maruti Zen Estilo which sports a monoform design..

Estilo means “style” and it surely lives upto the tag that has been added to the new Zen!

With first service just round the corner I have managed to drive 800 Kms in the crowded city of Delhi.Coming to the mileage first of all as it is certainly the most talked about point in the budget level segment cars,Estilo gave me a mileage of 16kmpl with every litre of the gas being spent on the city road and not the highway,so that does a seem a pretty decent average considering the fact that it is still in the run-in period.

The car sports the same engine as the Wagon R which is a 1.1 litre 32X4 hypertech engine.
The specs for the engine are as follows:

• 1061cc
• 64.8ps
• 84Nm,
• 4-cylinder
• 16-valve
• MPFI F10D Petrol

The engine has not been refined much except for the fact that it has been tweaked a bit for responsiveness and fuel economy which certainly have given it a better mileage and better pick up time.Also the engineers have worked on the aerodynamics of this car…

The biggest difference where Zen Estilo scores the most are its interiors which are at par with some of the higher end cars and give you a feel of luxury.

Maruti has increased the interior space by extending the dashboard area of the car over the engine thus leaving little space in the engine compartment but certainly no complaints from me as you spend most of the time inside! Read the rest of this entry »

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