Hi, On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Rony <gnulinuxist(a)gmail.com> wrote: Do you have links to these plans? Thanks in advance. Cheers! Pradeepto -- The KDE Project : http://www.kde.org KDE India : http://www.kde.in Mailing List : http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-india

it seems to be good option but really expensive compared to people who would go on downloading there mails as i think 10gb fair usage policy cap is just not good it should be more than 25 gb per month

On Sunday 29 March 2009, Information Security wrote: Look at the coverage maps before buying. Besides the stupid fair use crap, national coverage outside small pockets of 35 cities is thru the 175Kbps (actually 30Kbps) cdma link. -- Rgds JTD

On Sunday 29 March 2009, Anshul Khandelwal wrote: Tata Indicom cdma modems work "well" @ 30kbps with an occasional burst of 175kbps. It works in most places in India and is an order of magnitude more reliable and faster than gprs. On periphery of small towns it slows down to 3~4 kbps. Still good enough for ssh. -- Rgds JTD

On Sunday 29 March 2009 10:14:28 Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: wow DJ saying a cap is fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: Yes and please look at the numbers? Its virtually unlimited unless you're doing some heavyweight downloading. I forgot to mention, the cap that I'm thinking of is only *downstream*. Not upstream. On a 1-2Mbps connection 500GB is very difficult to reach. - Dinesh

Rony wrote: What utopia are you talking about? Theres no such thing in India. I'm on Comcast 8Mbps. They have a so called "fair usage" policy. This is not strictly enforced because of several reasons. Technically we have 250GB soft cap. If we cross that, then we'll be "throttled". But thats only for repeat offenders. I think this is what India should also adopt. Airtel / other ISPs dont get the idea. MTNL until recently gave a paltry 200MB / 1GB limits on their 2Mbps connections which is complete BS. 50-100GB soft cap on a 2Mbps connection for Rs.500 is a good plan. The thing with western countries is that they have plenty and few to serve. India on the other hand is the opposite. Whatever "plenty" the ISPs create will be lapped up. Heh... Also, downloading doesnt necessarily mean storing on harddrive. - Dinesh

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 9:44 PM, scrapo <scrapo(a)saswatabanerjee.com> wrote: On the same front, i have consulted a lawyer, and according to him, it amounts to unfair trade practice, via false advertising. they can be take up in the consumer court and will have their knuckles rapped. Now the question is, who is the brave soul who can take both tata and reliance into court and survive.....

I am highly interested to "take them up in the consumer court". Anyone else who would like to support me.

scrapo wrote: I'm absolutely not rooting here for the thugs of the telecom industry. All I'm saying is if you give me a "limit" which exceeds my download capability, then in effect I have an "unlimited" connection - atleast I wont feel any difference. For example, if I have a 1Mbps connection, theoretically I can download ~327GB / month. If an ISP offers me the same connection with a, say, 500GB cap thats as good as being unlimited because I *cant* exceed the cap. Secondly, as I mentioned, in the US or western countries the word "cap" is used very liberally. It is *rarely* enforced. Unlike Indian ISPs which will shut you off if you exceed the limit. What MTNL and other ISPs have done is, they've conned the Indian consumer. 200MB / month is a freakin' joke. But what have you lawyers done about it? The TRAI rarely has, if any, support from the white collared public. All that "geeks" of our nation can do is sit at their 1337 machines and sign online petitions. They cant go into Airtel's office smash some heads and show them that we mean business. We're not to be taken for a ride. I'm not an extremists but the horror stories I've come to know over the years, I for one believe that strong action is essential. Also, I can understand that India has limited interconnect with the rest of the world. Indian ISPs are charged a lot but isn't it true that Indian ISPs ( TATA and Reliance ) now own some of the largest backbones out there? Last time I checked Reliance had some 10,000 terabits of unlit fiberoptic capacity ( Was it the Flag telecom deal? Dont remember exactly ). Has anybody considered going and trashing some offices and punch the A** H***s whole make plans to milk the Indian consumer? Hmm... Saswata, how many cases have you registered against any ISP for their unfair data limits? poor customer service? Horrible uptime? Oh and the best line of them all comes from an MTNL customer care rep: Me: So do you have any "unlimited" plans? Rep: Yes, all our plans are unlimited. Me: ( rolls eyes ) No. All your plans are limited upto a certain amount of data transfer like 1GB, 200MB etc... Rep: Yeah, so? Me: ( Gets frustrated ) They're not *unlimited*. I want an *unlimited* plan. Rep: Umm...your plan is already unlimited. Me: Come on lady!! The plan restricts me to a set data transfer amount! Rep: No! You can download as much as you want to. You just have to pay for the extra transfer! Me: x_x ( This was at a time when MTNL had introduced unlimited plans in Delhi and not in Mumbai ). I corrected my terminology - I call them Flat rate plans :P - Dinesh

Pankaj Jangid wrote: Geez...grow up man. You post to a mailing list about your tweet? :P Anyway, theres nothing false about Reliance's advertising. The plan *is* unlimited. Its just that you have to pay beyond a certain usage. They're not going to cut you off. They will simply charge you for the extra usage. ( Check out my other reply to Saswata. It should make this clear ). They distinguish between a "Flat Rate" plan and "Unlimited plan". It also depends on what definition they use. Their definition of unlimited isn't misleading or wrong. Also, they have clearly marked it and specified it in the fine print so its a losing case for the consumer. Lastly, theres a difference between - Unlimited, Unmetered, Flat fee / rate plan. What you can pull them up for is putting *any* limits at all. As I see it they are creating an artificial scarcity of resources. We can show the court how much international bandwidth these people have and how much the country's infrastructure supports. They're hoarding it and selling it and at an artificially high price. If we convince the courts that theres plenty for everybody and yet they're showing as if theres scarcity we can not only get higher speeds, unmetered bandwidth but maybe get the ISPs to compensate ( monetarily ) to the long time consumers. I remember clearly that TRAI mandated a 70% cut in leased lines a while back and that had ZERO impact on the costs for the end consumer. All it did was fattened up the grossly high profit margins of these money grabbing telcos. Atleast I didnt see a 70% cut in my broadband bill. - Dinesh

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 9:44 PM, scrapo <scrapo(a)saswatabanerjee.com> wrote: Right. And MTNL does have unlimited plans atm. They even reduced the rates since 1.1.09. As far I could check there is no such crappy no fair use clause with MTNL. I am using Trib Unlimited 512 Kbps since 1.1.09. Before that I was on Trib Unlimited 256 Kbps plan. Cheers! Pradeepto -- The KDE Project : http://www.kde.org KDE India : http://www.kde.in Mailing List : http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-india

Pradeepto Bhattacharya wrote: I shifted to the NU plan last year and while the plan works technically, I am billed only Rs. 150/- for incoming only telephone and no rental for broadband. However the billing assumes I have a 400 MB limit and I am charged for the 400+ MB downloaded during the daytime. A few months ago I finally decided to call up the billing dept. to inform them about this error. The guy acknowledged it by checking it online while the call was on but expressed inability to make note of it unless I gave a letter to them. So I am only paying 150/- per month plus net usage above 400 MB. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: As Saswata had mentioned a few years back, this is MTNL's business strategy of giving you full speed and making you pay for usage. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: From what I have heard, Tata's services are supposed to have improved. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

Rony wrote: They're still the thugs they were. Nothing has improved. Dont take the word of a couple of stray bloggers. The service SUCKS. The company SUCKS. Ratan Tata gives a $hit about what customers think about his company. Hes right now all into the "Nano" hype and they get off on their artificially inflated numbers and meaningless statistics. - Dinesh

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 12:38 AM, Rony <gnulinuxist(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm really not sure what you guys are talking about here. When all the limitations are mentioned in a plan you buy, how is it a fraud? The same goes for Airtels fair usage policy -- it's not a secret internal memo. It's a public document. Also, regarding the cost of broadband in India, isn't there another dimension to it, i.e. the amount of traffic that goes from one country to another, that determines this cost? I had read about this somewhere (also in one of the manifestos Venky had posted) that the amount of traffic going out of India as opposed to the amount that comes in also determines this cost. So it's easy for European countries, Japan, China and the US to give download caps of 250-300 GB or so since most of their traffic is either local or outbound. Also, there are chances you might reach it since they have bandwidths up to 8 Mbps (I had read something about 3 Gbps lines in Japan). So it's really not fair to compare between the US/UK and India for this. Also, having a download cap when you're never going to reach it is absurd -- why have it in the first place? The cap is generally analogous to the capacity of the network. While it may not necessarily fair, it is a business limitation that Airtel chooses to work in. If you as a customer do not like that cap then simply change ISPs. No point cribbing on the mailing list -- they don't read it :) -- Siddhesh Poyarekar http://siddhesh.in

Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: If you cant exceed, then how is it a cap ? And what is the purpose of a cap ? To prevent accounting error ? Nope. You are wrong. The american internet users are very frustrated with caps and specially since they are not communicated or even documented. Mostly done at their own whims and fancy. Also in each area in US, there is only 1 ISP so people do not have a choice which they at least have in India (in quiet a few places). While we may not have good competition, they have none. If you are not happy, you can not do anything about it. if you complain loudly, you are going to be the only one on the block without a connection. I have friends and clients in USA who confirm this and there is plenty of articles on this online if you wish to check. There are more horror stories there than here. Ofcourse, their level of expectation is much different. But that is like saying that American as 2 cars per person, we have 1 for 10 people ...... not a fair compare. yes, they are offering a plan for Rs. 200 (US$ 4 per month) which is a rate you will not find in USA. This is a plan that is meant for light home users, people who are only going to use it to check their emails once a day. the popularity of the scheme is because in India, people want small slice service. Its a very good move. And very practical. If you want more usage, take a better plan. Whats stopping you ? In office we are on an MTNL plan that gives us close to guaranteed 2 mbps speed which we need for our ERP connectivity and we are paying for that good quality bandwidth. There is a 45gb cap, but i know we are not going to use more than 15gb in a month except when a new Fedora version is put up. We are business users, and we do not go and download movies so we dont need 500gb downloads. My lawyer have not been put to that task. I vote with my wallet. I chose a service I want, and pay for it. If i am not happy with it, I switch to what options I have. The market will get them in line soon enough. Provided ofcouse the market actually wants such a thing. If you are the only person wanting 500gb transfer and wanting to pay Rs. 1000 per month for it, the vendors are not going to bother. So what stops you from going and supporting TRAI by filing a complaint or at least by responding to their request for public comment on documents, etc which they keep putting up. Really ? Why not instead switch to someone who is going to give you better facility ? And be prepared to pay for what you are going to use. Reliance owns flag, which has 10K TB of bandwidth. True, but how much of it terminates in India ? Airtel has put its own fiber on east coast to connect to the main pipes through singapore. Tata is a partner of one of the large fiber groups due to ownership of vsnl. they hold the rights to build landing stations and will be sole channel for selling that bandwidth in India for 10 years (must be coming to an end soon, this is old story). Actually, I am pretty satisfied with my data limits and get pretty good uptimes. When I was not happy, eg, with hathway and with my cable guys at home, i switched. And as i said before, i am a business user. I am willing to pay for good quality and for my usage. Its unfair data limit to you, its fair to me. I had the option of other plans if i wanted to. MTNL site is very clear that they are talking unlimited in terms of connectivity time. If you remember, earlier they used to charge for time you are connected. But they have plans like NU, which so many people here use. If you call and ask the call center for a plan that does not exist and which their website makes clear does not exist, then what do you expect the lady to do ? Create one for you ?

On Tuesday 31 March 2009 00:55:29 Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: tata's response to customer complaints wrt wireless modem is awesome. Also their response to any complaint regarding their hotels. As for other segments of their empire I have no experience. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

scrapo wrote: Unmetered, Unlimited, Flat rate. The terminology is clearly there. I get your point and I'm not opposing it. TRAI or whoever is incharge must make sure the *correct* terminology is used while describing the plans. Lets do it then! :) Why hasn't anybody taken up Reliance to task for this? Why doesn't anybody do this if they feel so strongly about it? I think it was VSNL which was bought up by TATAs and same thing for BSNL. Yeah so? What did it mean for *us* retail consumers? It meant lower costs. We never got any! :( - Dinesh

scrapo wrote: Its a soft cap. Its near 100% of your theoretical usage which is impossible for a normal user to exceed. So cap higher than your theoretical maximum usage is as good as unlimited, that was my point. Nah... I didnt get a chance to complain. *I* *am* currently in the US. I've been dealing with Comcast for the past 10 months. No chance to complain. Only once the bank mucked up my payment. They disconnected without a notice. A single call to their CC. Connection was on since I had promised to pay. Do you hear of such things in India? Indian companies have no sense of customer satisfaction. They're just to con you. American companies too do it. But its at a different level. Sorry, you're *wrong*. That Rs.200 is a pathetic joke and you as a lawyer shouldn't have fallen for it. I'm still assuming you're a lawyer. Lets do some math. My daily usage is: 1. I watch about 10 youtube videos daily. Each video is about 50MB = 500MB usage. 2. I download updates, surf, download content daily = ~4-5GB = 4096 - 5120MB usage. 3. I do video conferencing daily = ~100MB of usage. 4. Miscellaneous = ~1GB = 1024MB Total: Approximately 5.7GB daily. Comcast: $49.99 ( a month ) MTNL: Rs.5400 * 30 days = ~Rs.160,000 = ~$3250 ( a month ) Wow...India is surely rich. Ok, lets compare the flat rate plans. MTNL's 2Mbps unlimited costs Rs.9999 = ~$200 a month! And you get less than 1/4 the speed that comcast offers. My usage is reasonable. Even if you halve it, it still works out to $200 for MTNL and $50 for comcast. $200 for a 2Mbps unlimited connection? No thanks! With MTNL's level of customer care, its shitty. I've heard horror stories about comcast too but after witnessing their service for almost a year I've found it to be very good. It too has its flaws though. Uh...your business doesn't need it. What about others who transfer large data files or have offsite backups? hmm..? What about a home user wanting to work from home? There isn't any. Theres zero competition. Search the linuxer's archive. I've been ranting about Airtel not wiring up my building for last 4 years. Go figure! Its a MONOPOLY!! They own and control a large share of international bandwith in South East Asia. It isn't a big deal for them to terminate some more in India. Unless ofcourse theres already plenty and they dont need to! Hence my argument of artificial scarcity. I repeat. That was an anecdote. It was at a time that Delhi got unlimited plans and Mumbai was also supposed to get. I have nothing against MTNL. They've provided good service. ( I'm saying this despite my connection @ Mumbai not working! ). - Dinesh

On Tuesday 31 March 2009, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote: True. Much as one would like to fry them, They will go to the bank laughing once you loose the case. The ad clearly states that all is not fair and lovely. Fibre terminated in the house man. 10Gbps. dont know what the cap is though. 972 GB is what you will get connecting between two points not going through some MAN, i.e between your office and your car for example. Several do. -- Rgds JTD

On Tuesday 31 March 2009, Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: You dont have a clue about what you are talking. If you thought they suck, the other dad n son corporates will make you commit suicide. While Tata's standards are 2 orders of magnitude worse than what you would get in Japan, They are atleast much better than the rest in the country. Most wont lift a finger without threatening them with legal action. Service according to most is making a zombie call and when threatened send over another zombie. -- Rgds JTD

On Tuesday 31 March 2009 10:24:10 Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: the old service cost 2500 initially - of which I assume the major chunk is the cost of the modem. The new one costs 3500 - again major chunk would be modem cost. Anyway I have mailed customer care and asked them to consider things like transfer of sim card, phone number and deposit to the new scheme which would give some discount. (possibly a 1 or 2 hundred rupees). Let us see what they say. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

On Tuesday 31 March 2009 13:38:11 Pradeepto Bhattacharya wrote: wrote: I got a special discount - 2200 plus some free usage -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

On Tuesday 31 March 2009 17:08:11 Rony Bill wrote: and anyway photon is only available in small areas - no use for people who travel a lot. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: Nopes, I think you are wrong. I worked on such a situation once. You do not pay for the pipe, you pay the data flowing through the pipe, with a minimum charge even for not having data. These are called Termination Charges or Interconnect charges. There is even a govt body that was trying to get Indian ISP to internconnect here to avoid paying higher charges to western telecom comapnies for internet. Net neutrality on the other hand refers to preventing discrimination between data coming from 2 alternate sources, not teh quantum of data. It has nothing to do with volume. regards saswata

scrapo wrote: India is heavily populated and this excess demand drives the monopoly of big players in the internet scene. While it is true that if we want more download limit, we should pay more, the limits that are set do not do justice to the amount that is collected by them from us. Once a cable is laid to the home/office, and rent for the same is collected every month, it does not matter how much data goes through it. Internet is nothing but a mega network of machines. If international bandwidth is expensive, at least local sites should be freely accessible with no traffic limit, once the maximum speed per user is already preset. As mentioned above, we are too large in numbers and if a few of us go away, more will come in. However as more players step in to provide competition, things will definitely improve and this change is already taking place. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

On Wednesday 01 April 2009 00:06:25 Rony wrote: international bandwidth is dirt cheap - it is only in India with cartels hoarding bandwidth it is expensive. The major expense for a European data centre is 1. rent 2. man power 3. electricity bandwidth hardly figures in the balance sheet. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: Good! One more reason to make downloads cap free. :-) -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

Rony wrote: Can we use this for VoIP and video conferencing? How is the latency? - Dinesh

Rony wrote: Perhaps my question wasnt clear. I wanted to know about the latency on these connections since I'd like to use VoIP and video conferencing apps which are sensitive to latencies and wireless connections aren't very good when it comes to latencies. - Dinesh

Rony wrote: Could you try and let me know? And BTW what BSNL 3G are you talking about? - Dinesh

Dinesh A. Joshi wrote: I have to wait till someone buys it. BSNL's 3G is promising faster downloads of upto 8 Mbps. 3G services are going to be launched this year. -- Regards, www.zedge.com for free and funny ringtones. Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

On Saturday 04 April 2009, Pankaj Jangid wrote: Both EvDO and 3g will provide good latencies initially, but as usual will become flaky as more users take up bw. A little later than tier 2 cities. MTNL has been starting new services after BSNL. -- Rgds JTD

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:14 AM, Pradeepto Bhattacharya <pradeeptob(a)gmail.com> wrote: FYI, Tata Indicom CDMA USB modem (the post Photon version) is totally useless in sector 14 Vashi where I stay now. Tata Indicom support staff (Vashi) tell me "Sector 14 mein 'feasibility' nahi hai saar". Mankhurd ( 70% to 90%). I feel cheated by Tata Indicom's wireless internet service and would not recommend it to any user. Regards, -- Vivek Varghese Cherian Website : http://vivekvc.freeshell.org Blog: http://vivekvc.wordpress.com IRC: Vivek and ViveKVC on both Freenode and OFTC GPG Key fingerprint: 0F53 447E A8D1 C4F7 C14E F117 A040 E935 7DFA D159