Team-BHP - How much do you pay for your broadband?

Just had 3 days of downtime with Youbroadband fiber connection. There was a line cut somewhere and the guys arrived at my home to investigate and told me will be fixed in 30 mins. Their ONU is connected to my house power and I had switched off power to it. They went on a bike looking at the overhead cable to trace where it was cut and within an hour it was fixed. My frustration is that no one reverted to me on my 3 day old complaint and responded to my emails. They have an SLA of 3 days and they arrived only on the 3rd day. This could have been fixed on the same or next day itself but then the company is not known to be pro-customer!!' Frustrated! Am now considering switching to a lower tariff plan and retain two providers, as Cherrinet is also in my street and have redundancy instead of paying 1700 to one provider. Both have. 40-50Mbps plan in the 900-1000 price range so by stretching my budget, I will atleast hopefully not have to remain without Internet, especially over the weekend.

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Originally Posted by kp1992 (Post 3710963)

Koramangala, Bangalore: I am using Hathway since 5 months. Got the initial set up done for 3,300 (3 month one time payment with free wifi modem and installation). It is a 50 MBps plan with FUP of 50 GB a month. I end up getting 35-40 MBps which is decent for the price they are quoting. No complaints till date :D

Hi, even i was planning to switch from act bb to hathway, are you still on hathway in koramanagala? how stable is their connection and how soon would they fix/attend to the problems?

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Originally Posted by carboy (Post 3868463)

Anyone using fivenet broadband in Chembur here? Is it reliable, is it fast? What plans are you subscribing to? Asking for a friend who is having a miserable time with Hathway Bhawani and looking to shift.

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Originally Posted by carboy (Post 3871368)

My friend shifted to Fivenet from Bhawani Hathway. And his verdict after 4 days is it's far more reliable than Bhawani Hathway. Only hassle with fivenet is that you have to pay a year in advance.

In Chembur using Fivenet (Shree Sai Net).
Highly reliable and fast service too.
1mbps speed unlimited.
Rs 1,700 per Quarter, they have monthly and yearly payment options too.

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Originally Posted by noopster (Post 3895436)

Bought into the BS of a sales guy and bought a Reliance CDMA dongle instead. It's called a Wi-Pod and can transmit Wifi when plugged in to max 5 devices. Rated speed is 14.7 Mbps but I was assured of a download speed of between 1-5 Mbps (which isn't great but I was OK since there were no other options).

Paid up 6 months in advance as well to take advantage of the limit cap being lifted. Now I find that I hardly get a signal- the measured download speeds are in the range of 50-200 kbps tops.

Long-overdue update: Reliance were able to fix the coverage issue within a week or so of my reporting it. There was some tower failure locally, apparently. I get decent 3G speeds, nothing lightning fast but enough for Whatsapp, Facebook and the occasional Youtube video.

Cost is 1000/- per month paid up in advance for 6 months. Extension for a further 6 months by paying 4200/- So effectively it's 850/- per month for a year, no cap on data usage. Not bad at all, I think.

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Originally Posted by atnyia (Post 3901719)

I have worked with an ISP as a network engineer. In my humble view, folks should stick with private IPs (10.x.x.x ) in general. There shouldn't be a need of public IP unless you intend others to reach you, like you own a public website.Use a software built over to communicate with things at home.

Public IPs are a big security risk and anyone from anywhere can attack you easily. Private IP is an important layer of security.

Do you mean one should not go for static IPs? If so, how does one access equipments when not at home. eg: security cameras?

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Originally Posted by noopster (Post 3933712)

Same story as yours but much worser. Got the same Wi-Pod dongle from a salesguy who took me for a big time ride. To cut a long story short, the dongle was activated only after 5 days of purchase, only to show very poor signals (in kbps), called the salesguy who took it back on the pretext of updating the software and absconded. Managed to reach him after 10 days and get an update that its not the software but the device that is defective. He said he will replace it but in vain. My efforts in following up with him went in vain and since it was almost a month, I got the first bill. A bill for not using any services and for not even having the dongle with me. Made a big issue of it at the Reliance showroom in Haddows road Chennai (where the guy had got it) and today am in a state where I have paid the first bill for no fault of mine and there is the next bill thats come and all my requests to Reliance to terminate this connection have fallen on deaf ears.

I am extremely frustrated with this harrowing experience with Reliance. It was my blunder to have gone in for Reliance knowing very well their unprofessional attitude and service which I have experienced in the past as well on more than one occasion. I have sworn never to avail any services from Reliance ever in my lifetime even if they were offered free.

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Originally Posted by earthian (Post 3933720)

Do you mean one should not go for static IPs? If so, how does one access equipments when not at home. eg: security cameras?

From my point of view, this is elementary. There is a good chance that the DVR company itself could be providing a HTTP service to connect to their cameras by registering the camera.
If that is not true, there are very good options to avoid this, like Network Address Translation, Dynamic DNS.

Note: My understanding is that you are implying public IP being statically assigned, like for an Internet website.

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Originally Posted by atnyia (Post 3934020)

Whoa! I am confused.
What i know is that i have a static IP ( with a fixed IP address) and that is required to ensure that i can connect to my home security system remotely. In fact i pay Rs 2300/- per month for a measly 1 MbPS download speed due to this.
Any advice would be appreciate. Service provider is Tata Communications, not Tata Docomo.

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Originally Posted by Gansan (Post 3934381)

I am on a 20 GB @ 4 Mbps plus unlimited local / national calls plan from Airtel, for Rs 1499 per month.

By default Airtel is now giving all subscribers 100Gb FUP. Reaching 200Gb at 4Mbps could be a challenge I think! You should push them to give you the 100Gb free of cost and tell them you will think about it after you see the usage ;)

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Originally Posted by earthian (Post 3934281)

Even I feel confused that this should require static IP. Have you checked DVR manual? Does it say that static IP would be required?
Technically speaking, think of Skype. You can call your spouse who is at home, inside your private router network, with a dynamic IP. How? Because there is DNS based application support from the software, i.e., Skype.
I find it hard to imagine that the DVR company is not providing some application layer support for their cameras to users.

Note: I can be wrong as I have not worked on CCTV cameras but this is counter intuitive to me. A quick google search also validates that static IP should not be mandatory.

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Originally Posted by TheTeacher (Post 3933254)

Are you not happy with Act? Please tell the reason for thinking of switching?

- Connection is unreliable, it takes close to 7 days to fix the issue (fiber cut or when they change the main box from one place to another), even for simple issues like someone turned off the box they need 1 or 2 days to fix the same!
- Lonnnng wait times to reach their customer service team, sometimes close to 20-25 minutes.
- My bill cycle is more like prepaid i.e. i pay entire months bill by the mid of the month, whereas in airtel or other providers you pay this months bill by mid of next month (after the bill has been generated) and even after paying everything on time they still irritate you to the core!

1. 4-5 messages reminding me to pay for the month
2. They call you and say "Saaaar please pay bill", even after paying every month on time! (bill payment would be due 15th and they start calling you from 10th, sometimes i would be in middle of some meeting and cant even shout at them) :Frustrati