Why BSNL Broadband is Better than Others – An Experienced BSNL user Review

Hi friends, I have been using BSNL broadband for past 2 years and BSNL internet for more than 5 years now. My father is also in BSNL but I told you this as I  wish to tell you that I’m not biased to BSNL due to this  [ I’m not getting paid by BSNL anyway for this review 🙂 ] . Here is my sincere and honest review about BSNL’s broadband service .

Places I have used BSNL Broadband

• Saharanpur (UP)  – Very Good connectivity and at max 1 or 2 failures and too due to me   playing   around with Telephone wire 🙂
• Ghaziabad (UP) – Pretty erratic and frequent disconnections and disconnections even for 2-3 days  ( but if it is running fine and no hardware fault or exchange problem comes up then it runs for months without any problem )
• Dehradun (UK) – The Best so far, and also my current broadband plan as of October 2009 ( High speeds and not even a single disconnection or period of inactivity for past 3 months )

BSNL Broadband Plans I have Used so far

I have used the following BSNL plans so far , mentioned  with their pros and cons

• Home 500 Combo Plan – Also known as the night unlimited  Plan , this is the Best plan for Downloaders/ Office/college/Non Techie people who are busy during day and only get time during night to browse and download stuff. ( Using free download manager – you can automate your downloads to start from 2AM  and stop before 8AM)
• Home unlimited 750 (256Kbps ) – An unlimited plan with 256 Kbps speed which is about a 100MB in 1 Hour at full speed , this one is good for users who stay most of the time online and want to surf a lot, but not much into HD videos , youtube streaming content etc. although you can listen to streaming  128Kbps mp3’s quite well
• Home unlimited 1350 ( 512Kbps ) – The best and the highest speed unlimited plan    offered by BSNL yet , great for heavy Internet users and for downloading HD stuff and watching youtube videos ( This is My current plan )

Benefits/Merits  of BSNL Broadband over Others ( Airtel, Photon, Reliance , Sify  and more)

mentioned below are issues on which according to me BSNL beats most of other major Broadband providers

1. Available nearly everywhere even in Rural areas and small cities ( I consider this a great achievement , and it definitely benefits people who live in not so Big cities can have broadband access )
2. Best price/performance ratio – believe me you cannot get anything faster within a price cheaper than what BSNL offers ( although Airtel seems to be taking the lead with it’s new Turbo 1299 plan , but as I said it’s not available everywhere ,it’s not in Dehradun a big city and capital of Uttarakhand )
3. Dynamic IP provided – Good for downloading stuff from Rapidshare and other servers which impose limit on downloads per IP , also you can setup a Webserver from your own home using any Apache PHP MYSQL stack or IIS .
4. Speeds Better than promised – As far as I’m concerned and my friends , BSNL  always gave  speeds even better than the speed in the plan ( Like a 256 Kbps plan should get me a maximum of 32KB/sec but i have gone to even 40KB/sec , similarly for the 512 Kbps plan I reach 70KB/sec , when I should be getting something around 64KB/sec )
5. No FUP – since the talks of Airtel limiting the unlimited plans to prevent unfair use of bandwidth , Unlimited plan users were annoyed but there is no such things with BSNL , I have myself done around 25GB in a single month on that 256Kbps plan  and currently doing 9GB in 4 days on the 512Kbps unlimited plan )

Disadvantages Demerits and Shortcoming’s of BSNL Broadband

Here are some problems with BSNL broadband that you may come through

1. Slow customer care and response from officials – Well that is the most well known shortcoming associated with BSNL broadband and even telephone connections , as people say that BSNL personnel work in a much “BABU “ kind of way like in “Sarkari ( govt. )” offices. I agree it’s true I have to go through such issues even though my dad is in BSNL . But nowdays I find that BSNL customer care picks up the phone quick and they solve the problem too , Let’s hope for the best
2. Huge Broadband Bills or Overcharging – As far as I know from my father and other BSNL personnel I know, the overcharges and bills are always genuine, it’s due to customer’s mistake that such things occur  ( specially if you are using night unlimited plan and forget to stop download before the free time finishes  and cross your monthly bandwidth limit )
3. Difficulty and Time delay in getting a connection – I know Airtel is pretty quick and sometime you get your internet connection within a day , while on the contrary BSNL takes around 4-5 to 15-20 days  . But believe me the wait is worth the high Speed and low price you get . 

Well, I hope that was enough of  “My thoughts” to have you intelligent species be forced  to write your views in comments , correcting or supporting me and I will keep this post updated with information from your comments . 

As for me I Iove BSNL over the years and I like Airtel too but it’s not available in many cities and also not at every place , so BSNL rules the spot according to me !!