BSNL Broadband Service Update – The Trap!
From January 1 2007 onwards, BSNL is giving you the speed of 2mbps for every home & business customer except those who are using UL (unlimited) packages. Now you may not know, this service upgrade will cost you more money than you expected.
When BSNL launched their services years ago, the packages were based on the speed and usage limitation. For home plans, they were starting at 256kbps and ending at 1mbps. By this service upgrade, BSNL will allow you to surf at speeds of 2mbs wherever it is possible. This means the old 256kps people can now surf at 2mbs. The other difference is that usage limit has been increased to higher levels.
The changes are as follows
Home Starter :
400MB -> 1GB
Home 500
1GB -> 2.5GB
Home 1000
2.5GB -> 5GB
Home 1800
5GB -> 10 GB
Home 3300
10GB -> 20GB
Now with massive speed, here is scenario,
For 2mbps connection, the average download rate will be
2048/8 = 256KB/s.
As usual you won’t get this much with BSNL broadband. Thus approximating it to around 240KB/s, you need only 73 minutes to use the full 1GB. Which is approximately equal to 1hr & 15 minutes. Thus if you start checking YouTube like sites or the sites with large images, you can easily use more that this bandwidth in matter of hours. At end of the day you will be paying extra for the additional usage.
The people who will be hugely affected are Internet cafes. Most of the cafes’ don’t have bandwidth control and customers can easily exploit this situation. With the help of a USB stick, they can easily download GBs of data in matter of hours. If you are smart you can download DVDs at as low as Rs.50 or so. (approximately 3-4hrs of cafe usage)
The maximum allocated usage is 75 GB for the biggest business plan. Smaller browsing centres will be using packages of 20Gb limit. And I believe this can be used up in matter of days. Then these people need to pay extra for the additional usage.
The point I’m making is that, high bandwidth does not help you. It is only helping BSNL. This is a trap by BSNL, they know Indians are addicted to Internet and if they give you more speed, you will definitely use more and pay more.
Honestly, I think the only way you can enjoy the freedom of web is by downgrading to UL plans.
Comments
About Author
arun February 4th
I agree with you that home users will finish the 1 GB limit pretty fast maybe one the first week itself.
Using BSNL broadband in Cyber Cafe is foolisness. Hope cafe owners know business
Tuning February 4th
Yeah, Arun.
Unfortunately there are some places where BSNL is the only service provider providing broadband service. (Just like mine
)
Sanjay February 6th
YA i also run a cyber cafe and i am using dataone business 700 plan. since jan my free usage is getting exausted at 5 times than in the previous year.
can any one pls suggest any bandwith control
sudheersundalam June 19th
As u have stated above, the same is being observed by me too.
But I am kicking of the BSNL’s ass by downling at night times…On an average I am downling 4-5gb/day.
suhas December 12th
how can u upgrade my connection.?
my downlad speed is only 35kb/ps
Tuning December 15th
Hi Suhas,
You need to contact BSNL for upgrading your connection. Just provide a written application stating you need to upgrade connection.
hth
Enrique July 19th
Guys you’ll are talking about BSNL….I think its better to have BSNL than private providers like Reliance and Airtel…
There are less catches in BSNL and it is more flexible than them…Trust me am talking from experience….I worked for Reliance and I know how they cheat people. They think they own the country
amit November 25th
if i am seeing youtube then i have to be pay for that(1gb broadband)
praveen May 13th
I agree as well as disagree with you.
There are different types of usages and hence there are different types of plans. It is up to the user to buy the correct plan and restrict his usage as per plan.
If someone is giving free food at his birthday party, then we should know how much of what we should eat. There is no point in forcing everything in and ending up sick the next day and calling the birthday boy a fraud because he offered free food.
Limited plan is meant for people who use limited internet. It is true that Internet is addictive and so is higher Internet speed. People with limited knowledge about Internet start with small plan and end up with a big bill. However we cannot blame BSNL for that.
Before making a phone call, one should know the difference in charges of local call and International call, no point in calling up US and talking for 2 hours assuming the charges would be same like local call.
So you cannot call this “a trap”, but definitely new customers should be “warned” about usage cost they could incur with a limited connection.
In conclusion, you point is correct, but the heading is wrong [though catchy
]
There are lots of people who use limited internet, these increase in speed and capacity has definitely helped them.
Thanks.
Tuning May 18th
Hi Praveen,
Thanks for your comment.
Things have changed a lot since I wrote this post. Now BSNL is providing 24mbps plans. I can’t imagine how this will affect the bandwidth usage at end of the month.
Fortunately, there are ways you can use to prevent downloading in office.
-T
Add Yours
YOU