RailWire Broadband Tariffs
The Good:-
<Quote>
Their un-limited pricing plans sound reasonably priced ( by Indian standards).
Plan No. Port Speed* Plan Rental** (In Rupee)
iRW002 256 Kbps 320
iRW004 512 Kbps 620
iRW006 1 Mbps 920
iRW008 2 Mbps 1220
iRW010 4 Mbps 2120
iRW012 8 Mbps 3620
iRW014 16 Mbps 6920
iRW016 32 Mbps 13520

*Port speeds are on 1:4 contention ratio
**Plan Rentals are exclusive of applicable taxes and levies
</Quote>

Anyone knows what is the experience like ?

Its available in a very small part of Bangalore though
Area where RailWire is available
The bad:-
1. You can only use it on a single PC and authentication is bound to the MAC address.
2. Its available in a very small area.

The airtel guys have wired up the dsl cable, now I need to wait for phone and modem installation guy to come in and do the honours. That would be broadband in my place in 6 days since I moved in not bad at all for this sleepy and dusty cousin of Gurgaon and Delhi.
The reliance CDMA1_x datacard has been nothing better than a dial-up connection with absolutely no reliability, my Instant messenger conversations are disconnected way too often.

The voices inside my head have increased their primal chants of 'broadband broadband broadband' to a crescendo, after all a man can live without food, perhaps even water but not without broadband.

All is forgiven to Airtel , their non-stop pre-recorded voice spam messages in Kannada or Marathi, their text spam, their less than honest pre-paid mobile recharges( once I got Rs. Rs. 199.45 talktime for Rs. 555.00 ), if they can pull it off by the end of today.

Update: 1727 hours
Got a phone instrument on the DSL line. The DSL modem is still not in place.

Update: 1713 hours, 12 Dec, 2008
The airtel DSL installation engineer is sitting next to me and the broadband now works. Yippee

Now for power backup. Sigh! most people in civilized western countries have never heard about 'inverters'.

For those of you who live in small towns where BSNL is the only broadband service provider. Were you also appalled by Preity Zinta endorsing BSNL landlines while 4.4 million of those have been surrendered by un-happy users in past 2 years. Source: http://www.dot.gov.in/network/2008/nsfeb08.pdf and http://voicendata.ciol.com/content/columns/editorial/108050101.asp. According to me BSNL is a not so pretty(pun intended) speed bump on the road to information Super Highway in India. I agree with Atanu's advice to BSNL
<Quote>
* get rid of all restrictions on Internet telephony, the killer app for the illiterate and poor.
* stop censoring the Internet, and restricting the use of technologies such as encryption
* take action against those sending spam from India
* allow the nation to have a truly independent regulator, with genuine teeth
</Quote>

The image is a screenshot of punjab.bsnl.co.in.

to bdgarg@bsnl.co.in
cc pg_haryana@bsnl.co.in,pg_ab@bsnl.co.in
date Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:34 PM
subject Escalation of Grievance

Dear Mr. Garg,

1. I had applied for change of broadband plan(from home-250 to Home-UL-1350) on phone number almost a month ago around 15th June by submitting a written application duly signed for after the local telephone exchange insisted that it can't be done on phone. Since then only once they called up within 2 days and told me that the plan hasn't yet changed due to technical reasons they didn't elaborate and after that deadening silence.
2. I have been regularly contacting 01732-231017 on the status and I haven't got any positive response from them, infact most of the time the phone is not picked up.
3. I have followed the TRAI recommended method of
a) Calling the Call Center toll free number provided by the BSNL 18004241600 wherein they expressed in-ability to get the change done.
b) Called the nodal officer's at 0171-2603691 and 0171-2640050, the former doesn't pick up the phone and the latter has not responded back since one week.
c) I called you on your number and I was told you were in a meeting.

4. Kindly change my Broadband plan its one month overdue and BSNL continues to bill me at atrociously high dataflow prices making my usage of Internet un-tenable for the desired purpose. I shall be forced to seek disconnection of phone line if this grievance is not
resolved.

5. And yes I think BSNL is an ugly, inefficient and un-ethical monopoly and in any civilized country other than India this kind of behavior would invite heavy regulatory fines on the company.

No Thanks
-Tarun

--------
Context:
BSNL is the only provider of Broadband in my small town of Yamunanagar. And they are fugly monopolists. Airtel's behavior appears saintly in comparison to these 'fine folks'

Update 16-JUL-2008:

Next day the plan change happened and I got a phone call, 'aapka broadband plan change kar diya hai'. No I am not grateful to them. I think the turnaround time of one month is not acceptable nor is the the un-enviable uptime of services. But it is such a relief to be able to listen to music on shoutcast and being able to watch 'educational' videos on Youtube.

Update 17-JUL-2008:

What worked: I don't know really which approach worked with BSNL. Apart from the above escalation process I also complained to DoT ( Department of Telecommunications) through the ticketing system at Grievance portal for netizens of Indian State and from yesterday since the plan was changed have gotten half a dozen confirmation phone calls from Yamunanagar Telephone Exchange, Ambala Telephone Exchange and last one from Ministry of Communication. Previously a complaint with Grievance Portal for getting the BSNL Portal ID had also worked. BSNL Portal ID is required by broadband subscribers to view their dataflow usage if they are on a dataflow limited plan. To give you an idea of rationing of my usage of Internet, in the first 15 days of July I sent and received only 500 MB of traffic @2Mbps however the next day on 16th July I added another 500MB of dataflow from the rate unlimited connection of 512Kbps.