On Friday 07 July 2006 17:47, Harsh Busa wrote:

maybe you have a point but gving a connection is a lot more than extending the cable to ur home right ? they need support infrastructure / bandwidth etc to be resolved. their priority also depnds on number of users that they can get in a particular area for them to invest in setting up that infra.

ever since BSES Powersurfer ( now reliance ) started serivce their cable used to pass thru place outside my bldg but they have never given us a connection coz its very costly for them to set it up for a handful of users.

if airtel is smart enough and u get them enough interested ppl in ur area maybe they can expedite the process

Harsh

Wait right there Mr. There is a difference between Powersurfer which is just an ISP and Airtel which is a Telco. You must be knowing Airtel uses DSL. So in reality, internet is just a "side effect" of their telephone line :P. While powersurfer exclusively provides internet access. There is a difference. Besides, airtel being such a big telco cannot make excuses like its costly and such.

My friend is in a even worse condition. They have wired up their building but are refusing to provide anybody a connection because they haven't setup their billing system :P

Airtel sucks bigtime! >:)

On Saturday 08 July 2006 23:45, Harsh Busa wrote:

...

Wait right there Mr.

I CONSIDER THIS RUDE

Ok...I apologize for the rudeness.

you have so many choices like mtnl dsl , reliance watever , sify and rest of the world.

May I remind you that Airtel is the only ISP currently offering 256Kbps unlimited at Rs.999? MTNL, Reliance, Sify, <insert your favorite ISP here> dont provide unlimited connections. If they do, then they have very high tariffs. See the point is that Indian entrepreneurs suck big time including ADA and Bharati Mittal. They dont have aggressive expansion plans. ADA is currently shooting himself in the foot in his CDMA biz and driving away all his loyal customers.

Yes, Airtel currently has a monopoly and that is why I am pissed off at them. Do you think anybody would've waited for their stupid services if equivalent alternatives were available?!

On Sunday 09 July 2006 01:37, Harsh Busa wrote:

I still donot see monopoloy anywhere . i donot understand this . they donot have a billing system in place ... they donot have field staff trained and etc etc hen why would you even go with them even if they gave cheaper than 999 a month ! ... such services wud be called beta and sud be marked free :D

How many players are offering services in the same / similar segment? Only one. Thats airtel. Well then it is called monopoly... And buddy they aren't in "Beta" phase because they are actively calling up and advertising their services albeit not in the mass media, yet.

and to be a little rude to you now ... if you really cut down on so called cool and unnecessary downloads and file share et all you maybe happier than now.

Personally, you dont know what the heck I do with my internet connection so you dont have any right to advise me regarding my activities. But since I am in a good mood, I'll tell ya something. Airtel is renowned for its service in Delhi / Gurgaon region. Service refers to their uptime and CC. The speeds are not as promised but they are ok. I( and most people ) am not looking for an ISP which will give them 10/100Mbps pipes but ones who can go for a week without any downtime and offer decent speeds at the same time. MTNL would be an ideal choice but their CC is stupid and they dont have any flat rate plans.

and what does it have to do with ADA , mittals etc its the team and maybe it is execution that sucks. may be you are not their target segment ... just coz you think they are not cool doesnt mean they are loosers.

well lets see...its not just me but several others who are currently pissed off with airtel. Why? Well because of false promises. One of my friends was told that his location was serviceable and that they were giving out connections at his location and they would send their execs to get him connected. Guess what? After about 2 months of pursuing the matter they tell him that his area was never serviceable.

If that is not a perfect example of monopolistic attitude and sorry state of affairs within airtel's management then I dont know what is?

jtd wrote:

On Sunday 09 July 2006 02:12 am, Dinesh Joshi wrote:

...

On Sunday 09 July 2006 01:37, Harsh Busa wrote:

...

I still donot see monopoloy anywhere . i donot understand this . they donot have a billing system in place ... they donot have field staff trained and etc etc hen why would you even go with them even if they gave cheaper than 999 a month ! ... such services wud be called beta and sud be marked free :D

How many players are offering services in the same / similar segment? Only one. Thats airtel. Well then it is called monopoly...

That is a virtual monopoly. There is no restriction on anybody setting up an Internet service. It is not commercially viable outside limited pockets to provide "propah" internet services. PC densities are abysymal and usage patterns even worse. Moreover it is going to stay that way until voice and voip is unshackled by babudom. At that point small players will start creating the infrastructure neccessary for a decent service.

Ok, at this point, I cant resist putting an accountant's input. 1. In no case is there a monopoly in internet services. The only case of a monopoly is for cable internet because no one else can put up cable lines (ref - cable mafia) 2. There are multiple operators, multiple technology, multiple pricing available to you, choose the one which makes sense to you. 3. Simply because they are giving a much lower rate plan does not make them a monopoly. A monoploy means that no one else is there to provide that service (monopoly is not linked to pricing, but availability of the service) 4. I know the bandwidth and infrastructure prices in India. No player can offer decent Internet service without data-throughput caps. If you want to use a service with large data transmission limits, you will need to pay for it. No one can provide you with a lunch at the taj or oberio at the price of a thali in a udipi hotel. 5. The internet service providers are going to provide services first where they can make more money. First they will target corporate business, then upmarket housing complex and when that market is saturated, the common man. Your saying on this forum that Airtel sucks or that they are going to loose money and customers does not make a bit of a difference to them. They dont care. You are not their target customer and they cant make money by giving you service. The cost of catering to retail is 10-12 times the cost of catering to corporate traffic. (I went and bought Bharti Televentures shares after seeing their marketing plan and scheme). 6. The small players can not set up decent infrastructure. Even in so called advance markets, there are only very large players in the internet access market. In any case, it has nothing to do with unbundling. The cost of international bandwidth in India is at least 4 times that of western countries. And there is very little local content, so you have to go all the way to USA for your data. Till 2010 when VSNL / Tata monopoly over major fiber landing rights ends, the matter will change only a little. (FYI, Reliance is ready for that, they have bought the company that owns most of the fiber cables between India, Europe and USA. I can only hope their corporate profit goals are same as India's). The only reason why bandwidth prices have reduced to some extent is that Bhartai laid fresh under-sea fiber cables from India to Singapore to take advantage of fiber pipes from SEA to USA. But the ocst of bandwidth for small players will remain prohabitive. Only the big players can gain from economy of scale and volume pricing leverage. 7. Look at players like sify. They are offering 64kbps flat pipes at pretty attractive prices. But you get perhaps 20kbps and in most cases the possibility of you being able to do enough downloads using that pipe is low. Same with hathway......Airtel is only giving you an attractive pricing that they think you will not use more than 25%, so they are going to laugh all the way to the bank. And they are right. I use a reliance datacard @650 per month with 1 GB data transfer, 115kbps connectivity speed. I use the laptop all the time, connected to the net at least 10 hours a day, I have not even used half the data limit in any of the last 5 months. That is the business customers, that is what they are looking for and that is where they are going to make money. 8. Just for perspective, my client's branch office in Delhi was using bharti silver internet service. We got them to change as they were not giving anywhere close to the promised bandwidth and it was affecting business and work. So what are you so happy about Bharti coming to Mumbai ? Except that it will add another element of choice when you take a connection. The only ISP that delivers what they promise is MTNL.

That is my input. Hope it educated some people, and appologies to those who are bored by it.

Regards Saswata

jtd wrote:

On Sunday 09 July 2006 12:36 pm, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:

...

jtd wrote:

...

*** deleted to keep size down **** That is a virtual monopoly. There is no restriction on anybody setting up an Internet service. It is not commercially viable outside limited pockets to provide "propah" internet services. PC densities are abysymal and usage patterns even worse. Moreover it is going to stay that way until voice and voip is unshackled by babudom. At that point small players will start creating the infrastructure neccessary for a decent service.

Ok, at this point, I cant resist putting an accountant's input.

snip Agree Kompletely.

...

6. The small players can not set up decent infrastructure.

Nope not with the newer wireless routing technologies available on gnu/linux. Infact with proper wipop deployments the cost and performance will exceed ADSL.

...

Even in so called advance markets, there are only very large players in the internet access market.

That is what is published by the media. There are huge numbers of small providers charging $10 for 1 mbps pipe with unlimited access.

The ground realities are very different. Large parts of US and European markets (rural) are struggling for connectivity, with many places still depending on dial up. You will find it difficult to get an internet connection in USA below US$ 30 per month (exception - when they come up with launch offers and one time offers). Most of the people have no choice, either go with the local telco (they dont have much competition in local connections) or with the local cable buy. Few people are on wireless. That is why city municipal corps are trying to get city-wide wifi ips networks done at govt mandated price and service levels.

...

In any case, it has nothing to do with unbundling.

It has. One of the major revenue streams to the small player and a marginal pc user is voip - this market has all sorts of stupid restrictions on interconnectivity.

VOIP market is already open and available to you to use. The reason why it has not proceeded well is that VOIP rates are so low that they cant afford to pay interconnect charges for connecting to local telcos. Each call minute that terminates in a local landline or cell phone in India, the operator gets 30 paisa. If the VOIP operator is willing to pay that money to the telco, they will sign an interconnect agreement (there is also a annual socket fee of some amount). But at the VOIP rates, it is not viable.

You are already allowed to sell voip minutes and voip services in India. There are many VOIP providers here and you can call US, Canada and some European numbers through VOIP. What is not alllowed stilll is to connect the VOIP connection through your EPBX board to another external phone line. In fact, you are even allowed to connect a voip line to your internetal intercom network in the office. But the same network can not connect to a land line network in India.

The reason for this restriction is that the landline and cell operators in India have to pay a license fees, ADC and ESO fees which the VOIP operators naturally do not have to pay. If you allow these VOIP players to interconnect freely into the local landline and cell network, it removes the playing field. That is not correct.

...

The cost of international bandwidth in India is at least 4 times that of western countries. And there is very little local content, so you have to go all the way to USA for your data. Till 2010 when VSNL / Tata monopoly over major fiber landing rights ends, the matter will change only a little. (FYI, Reliance is ready for that, they have bought the company that owns most of the fiber cables between India, Europe and USA. I can only hope their corporate profit goals are same as India's). The only reason why bandwidth prices have reduced to some extent is that Bhartai laid fresh under-sea fiber cables from India to Singapore to take advantage of fiber pipes from SEA to USA. But the ocst of bandwidth for small players will remain prohabitive. Only the big players can gain from economy of scale and volume pricing leverage.

That too is a completely artificial restriction. There is such a surefeit of internationl fibre capacity that many players wound up - which led to RI buying them up at basement bargains. Remove voice monopolies and the revenue pie breaks up substantially, which will force the flattening of the market. And proly RI dumping it's buys.

The problem is that FLAG signed a legal agreement with VSNL when it was a govt company and the monopoly operator to be the only company to which it will sell bandwidth. And there was also an agreement on the quantum of bandwidth it will buy. After Tata bought VSNL, they are using that agreement (valid till 2020) to prevent FLAG from selling bandwidth directly to Reliance and Bharati. The matter is in court, but unfortunately by the time the court decides the matter, the agreement will not longer be valid.

Reliance is smart. They got the fiber at throw-away prices. With that pricing, they can wait for looooong time for the market and demand to rise and then benefit from it. Too much under-sea fiber was laid down due to easy funding during the internet boom and all on some really stupid and exegarated expectation of growth in video and interactive tv demand ACROSS CONTINENTS !!!.

The voice monopoly is already gone. You can now buy international voice lines (Called IPLC) from anyone who is ready to sell to you. That is how bharti was able to set up its own landing station on the east coast. Reliance is also doing it, but is stuck on account of the old FLAG Agreement. I hear they went ahead and built the new landing station anyway assuring the court that they will pay the compensation if the decision goes against them (not sure if that is true). But voice is more profitable, they will not risk that with data.

...

That is my input. Hope it educated some people, and appologies to those who are bored by it.

That was definetly interesting.

On 09/07/06 23:12 +0530, Rony wrote: <snip>

In this situation, will the telcos. allow this to happen? Will they place curbs on voip usage in order to save their revenue? Does the law have any such provision?

VoIP connectivity to PSTN is allowed only by operators with telecom licenses now. A lot of corporates are already on VoIP for inter office connectivity.

But they still need to connect to the PSTN to talk to their customers, vendors, sales-staff and people with mobiles.

Devdas Bhagat

Rony,

Quoting Rony ronbillypop@yahoo.co.uk:

On Sun, Jul 09, 2006 at 03:35:17PM +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:

...

VOIP market is already open and available to you to use. The reason why it has not proceeded well is that VOIP rates are so low that they cant afford to pay interconnect charges for connecting to local telcos. Each call minute that terminates in a local landline or cell phone in India, the operator gets 30 paisa. If the VOIP operator is willing to pay that money to the telco, they will sign an interconnect agreement (there is also a annual socket fee of some amount). But at the VOIP rates, it is not viable.

Hi Saswata,

Since you are into VoIP, what is the amount of KBs used per minute in a voip conversation? Considering that MTNL and BSNL have rolled out broadband practically all over India, suppose we have a situation where a company is selling cheap internet phones that connect directly to the adsl modem, if all the broadband users install this phone in their premises, from anywhere in India they will be able to call each other as if they are calling an MTNL or BSNL number and if other fixed line providers like TATA, Airtel and Reliance too give broadband on their lines, we will have a situation where all telephones are ip based. In such a scenerio, there will be no need to make outgoing calls on the landlines and for those whose bills run into a few thousand rupees even for local calls, this would be a big boon. We simply pay rent and no outgoing calls.

Ideally a normal phone call that you make is going on uncompressed channel 64kbps (DS0). VoIP is only allowed for major Providers. This is one more reason why you see 1 One India Plan coming from large telcos, they actually are terminating calls internally between their switches via their internal network, so eventually, the route which it takes is: Your phone --> Telco Switch --> Internet or PVT Network --> Remote city own Telco Switch --> Local network, earlier they all had to go through BSNL for terminating calls at remote cities and pay interconnect charges, hence your STD cost were so high (This law came into existence, when Reliance was charged by BSNL and MTNL for not paying their interconnect charges, coz they were routing all calls through their own laid fibres)

In this situation, will the telcos. allow this to happen? Will they place curbs on voip usage in order to save their revenue? Does the law have any such provision?

Skype :), Yahoo Messenger, MSN messenger and people are making calls, but law forbids anyone to interconnect with PSTN, so ideally its only PC to PC calls which are legal. No one other then basic telephony licensed providers are allowed to interconnect (they have to pay hefty interconnect charges on top of the 250crore bank gaurantee to Govt. of India)

This very same license fee has been reduced from 250 to 5 crore where by opening up field for more telco providers, But again lot of lobbying is happening here, telco / ITSPs are not allowed to interconnect with providers who are not ITSPs/telcos which means, if you have a basic telephony license you cant connect a user of normal ISP, you need to either lay your own fibre to the subscriber with your POP or use a middle man who also neccesary needs to be ITSP (Naturally when you use this middle man, they are not going to lease their fibre for free, so this means there is less competition, either lay your own fibre or pay interconnect charges to use middle man's fibre)

So now you see, all the freedom that you see made by TRAI is only in favour of large telco's who laid their fibre (Reliance, TATA, Bharti) not a fair game to play, telcos /ISPs are really not bothered you using a ATA, coz they are any ways making money on the bandwidth that you utilize to place such a call (64kbps unless otherwise you use any kind of codec, which again are not free, all of them are patented. G729 is the most popular one, it allows you to place calls at 8kbps)

Hope that helps.

Thanks & Regards, Mitul Limbani, Founder & CEO, Enterux Solutions, The Enterprise Linux Company (TM), www.enterux.com

On Sunday 09 July 2006 11:12 pm, Rony wrote:

Hi Saswata,

Since you are into VoIP, what is the amount of KBs used per minute in a voip conversation?

Depends on the codec. And audio pattern 13kbps for speex 13/8*60=97.5kB/min 64kbps for gsm 64/8*60=480kB/min That is the peak data rate and will generally be substantially lower. Speech is very compressible. But if u have background noise compression is lower and data rate will hit the peak. .

we will have a situation where all telephones are ip based. In such a scenerio, there will be no need to make outgoing calls on the landlines and for those whose bills run into a few thousand rupees even for local calls, this would be a big boon. We simply pay rent and no outgoing calls.

In this situation, will the telcos. allow this to happen? Will they place curbs on voip usage in order to save their revenue? Does the law have any such provision?

Periodically u read in the papers some poor soul being arrested for running an illegal exchange. They are using voip with a gateway (several land lines connected to an epabx) to connect to local numbers. But the telcos are losing money on the international segment , money guranteed by the govt. via licence charges. So no voip gateway for connecting to local landlines. Which is what delicensing is all about.

On Monday 10 July 2006 02:43 pm, Rony wrote:

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 02:02:40PM +0530, jtd wrote:

...

Periodically u read in the papers some poor soul being arrested for running an illegal exchange. They are using voip with a gateway (several land lines connected to an epabx) to connect to local numbers. But the telcos are losing money on the international segment , money guranteed by the govt. via licence charges. So no voip gateway for connecting to local landlines. Which is what delicensing is all about.

I am thinking a situation where at least one phone line in every pstn subscriber's place is broadband enabled and is fitted with an ip phone. There is no interconnect as it is bypassed by having ip phones in every home. Will MTNL and BSNL have a problem with that and create obstacles? The calls are ip to ip only.

No. They have a problem if u have a pipe via private isp and connect it to the phone line and offer voice services.

The new mobile phones have wlan connectivity so they can use hot spots (assuming they are up in all the important places) and stay IP connected.

U cunning fellow u is catching the drift. There are wifi phones available costing about $400 the last time i checked.If the ap can be shrunk into the phone (and that should be possible real soon now) every body is a walking telco. Yipeee free yakayak will be your birth right. Unless the govt tries to protect it's and the telcos milking schemes.

On Monday 10 July 2006 03:51 pm, Dinesh Joshi wrote:

On Monday 10 July 2006 15:52, jtd wrote:

...

U cunning fellow u is catching the drift. There are wifi phones available costing about $400 the last time i checked.If the ap can be shrunk into the phone (and that should be possible real soon now) every body is a walking telco. Yipeee free yakayak will be your birth right. Unless the govt tries to protect it's and the telcos milking schemes.

Well, most of the new Smart Phones have wifi on it. Install skype and you're good to make very cheap international calls. Even voice calls can be made free of cost provided both parties have skype :)

You still need to be near an ap. Having the ap in the phone makes everbody a mobile tower. But yes any registration server and client (ohphone and friends) should do. BTW does skype work behind a proxy? I think the question was asked here but i am tooo lazy to find out.

On 10/07/06 17:15 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote:

On Monday 10 July 2006 17:23, jtd wrote: *snip*

...

BTW does skype work behind a proxy? I think the question was asked here but i am tooo lazy to find out.

I think it does.

It works behind a NAT. Behind a decent ALG? No.

Devdas Bhagat

On 09/07/06 15:35 +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote: <snip>

VOIP market is already open and available to you to use. The reason why

False. I still can't VoIP to my parents.

<snip>

You are already allowed to sell voip minutes and voip services in India. There are many VOIP providers here and you can call US, Canada and some European numbers through VOIP. What is not alllowed stilll is to connect the VOIP connection through your EPBX board to another external phone line. In fact, you are even allowed to connect a voip line to your internetal intercom network in the office. But the same network can not connect to a land line network in India.

Unless you are a telco. Hence, the VoIP market is not open. If you have seen the Skype call charges, they aren't dependent on distance at all. Only to where you call.

The reason for this restriction is that the landline and cell operators in India have to pay a license fees, ADC and ESO fees which the VOIP operators naturally do not have to pay. If you allow these VOIP players to interconnect freely into the local landline and cell network, it removes the playing field. That is not correct.

Sucks. They could always refund/reduce the license and ADC costs.

<snip>

10 years from 1996. The line is open from 2006 end.

directly to Reliance and Bharati. The matter is in court, but unfortunately by the time the court decides the matter, the agreement will not longer be valid.

The matter in court is wrt Reliance getting bandwidth *now*. VSNL is simply not granting them access till year end.

Reliance is smart. They got the fiber at throw-away prices. With that pricing, they can wait for looooong time for the market and demand to rise and then benefit from it. Too much under-sea fiber was laid down due to easy funding during the internet boom and all on some really stupid and exegarated expectation of growth in video and interactive tv demand ACROSS CONTINENTS !!!.

The voice monopoly is already gone. You can now buy international voice lines (Called IPLC) from anyone who is ready to sell to you. That is how

IPLC == International Private Leased Circuit. It has nothing to do with voice.

bharti was able to set up its own landing station on the east coast. Reliance is also doing it, but is stuck on account of the old FLAG Agreement. I hear they went ahead and built the new landing station anyway assuring the court that they will pay the compensation if the decision goes against them (not sure if that is true). But voice is more profitable, they will not risk that with data.

Globally, data is becoming more profitable than voice. Oh, and voice *is* data.

Devdas Bhagat

On 11-Jul-06, at 1:28 PM, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:

I remember having seen skype's linux client. Is anyone here using it ?

have used it - works out of the box

On 09/07/06 12:36 +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote: <snip>

Ok, at this point, I cant resist putting an accountant's input.

1. In no case is there a monopoly in internet services. The only case of

a monopoly is for cable internet because no one else can put up cable lines (ref - cable mafia)

Unless you are in an area where you only have one provider.

2. There are multiple operators, multiple technology, multiple pricing

available to you, choose the one which makes sense to you.

3. Simply because they are giving a much lower rate plan does not make

them a monopoly. A monoploy means that no one else is there to provide that service (monopoly is not linked to pricing, but availability of the service)

4. I know the bandwidth and infrastructure prices in India. No player

can offer decent Internet service without data-throughput caps. If you

Of course they can. Can you please put your sources online?

want to use a service with large data transmission limits, you will need to pay for it. No one can provide you with a lunch at the taj or oberio at the price of a thali in a udipi hotel.

Erm? I didn't quite follow the idea of data transmission limits being a networking issue. That is a billing philosophy, not a networking issue.

Hint: At 33.6 kbps dialup, you can do: 10382 MB of data transfer. I don't see any dialup provider trying to bill by the byte.

5. The internet service providers are going to provide services first

where they can make more money. First they will target corporate business, then upmarket housing complex and when that market is saturated, the common man. Your saying on this forum that Airtel sucks or that they are going to loose money and customers does not make a bit of a difference to them. They dont care. You are not their target customer and they cant make money by giving you service. The cost of catering to retail is 10-12 times the cost of catering to corporate traffic. (I went and bought Bharti Televentures shares after seeing their marketing plan and scheme).

I agree with this. If you want the connectivity, you have two choices: 1) pay for it 2) build your own.

It won't be cheap either way.

6. The small players can not set up decent infrastructure. Even in so

Of course they can. See Brazil, the Nordic countries, Japan, HongKong, South Korea...

called advance markets, there are only very large players in the internet access market. In any case, it has nothing to do with

Wrong, wrong wrong.

unbundling. The cost of international bandwidth in India is at least 4

International pricing has nothing to do with this. This has enormous volumes to do with government owned BSNL, the bungling in the peering market and stupid ISP management. Local loop unbundling will allow a very large number of players access to customers for far lower costs, assuming it ever gets done correctly.

times that of western countries. And there is very little local content, so you have to go all the way to USA for your data. Till 2010 when VSNL / Tata monopoly over major fiber landing rights ends, the matter will change only a little. (FYI, Reliance is ready for that, they have bought the company that owns most of the fiber cables between India, Europe and USA. I can only hope their corporate profit goals are same as India's).

They won't be. In the Internet market, selling fat pipes is more profitable than selling thin ones.

The only reason why bandwidth prices have reduced to some extent is that Bhartai laid fresh under-sea fiber cables from India to Singapore to take advantage of fiber pipes from SEA to USA. But the ocst of bandwidth for small players will remain prohabitive. Only the big players can gain from economy of scale and volume pricing leverage.

Not if you set the market up correctly.

7. Look at players like sify. They are offering 64kbps flat pipes at

pretty attractive prices. But you get perhaps 20kbps and in most cases the possibility of you being able to do enough downloads using that pipe is low. Same with hathway......Airtel is only giving you an attractive pricing that they think you will not use more than 25%, so they are going to laugh all the way to the bank. And they are right. I use a

All ISPs oversell. *EVERY* one.

reliance datacard @650 per month with 1 GB data transfer, 115kbps connectivity speed. I use the laptop all the time, connected to the net at least 10 hours a day, I have not even used half the data limit in any of the last 5 months. That is the business customers, that is what they are looking for and that is where they are going to make money.

8. Just for perspective, my client's branch office in Delhi was using

bharti silver internet service. We got them to change as they were not giving anywhere close to the promised bandwidth and it was affecting business and work. So what are you so happy about Bharti coming to Mumbai ? Except that it will add another element of choice when you take a connection. The only ISP that delivers what they promise is MTNL.

And do they promise anything of value?

That is my input. Hope it educated some people, and appologies to those who are bored by it.

I still deal with this market. I don't see your numbers, and a lot of your claims are simply unjustified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access_worldwide RTFM.

Oh, and as a price point, a T1 in California costs 300 USD/mth.

For people interested in debating on this topic, more appropriate mailing lists are india-gii@lists.cpsr.org and sanog@sanog.org

Devdas Bhagat

On Friday 07 July 2006 19:52, Sameer Bagwe wrote:

Yes I "always" check around and I have seen "a lot" of good reviews about it atleast in north India..and many users in Mumbai eagerly waiting for Airtel's entry in the city..so I thought sharing this exciting news on this list....

Well, I was one of the people to get excited about getting Airtel BB. But their area managers are absolutely stupid. I got in touch with the one in my area and hes like we will be coming soon and its been now 6 months. The pathetic part is that the buildings nearby are all wired up but they havent provided any connections since a LONG and I mean a LONG time. This is just inexcusable behavior on the part of the company. They do give false info and promises to their customers. Personally, I think they are waiting for the govt. to unbundle the local loop which is like never going to happen in the next 100 years.

BTW, If you search the list then you might find my thread regarding Airtel BB serivces in Mumbai. The post was made WAAAYYY back :/ I think about a year ago.

...

why? Well simply because it is available only in select BUILDINGS in Mumbai. Yeah, not even select AREAS but SELECT BUILDINGS.

Oh they didn't mention buildings atleast on their site. Thnks for the info

np.