{"id":606,"date":"2004-11-26T16:34:18","date_gmt":"2004-11-26T11:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madmanweb.com\/2004\/11\/26\/bsnls_new_myste\/"},"modified":"2004-11-26T16:34:18","modified_gmt":"2004-11-26T11:04:18","slug":"bsnls_new_myste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/2004\/11\/bsnls_new_myste\/","title":{"rendered":"BSNL’s new mystery broadband service"},"content":{"rendered":"

BSNL<\/a>, our wonderful government telecom
\nprovider, has of late been putting out big newspaper advertisements touting its great new
\nbroadband service called DataOne. These ads are remarkable in that they contain
\nabsolutely no information except that they’re introducing a new service. That,
\nand their web site URL is all. <\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, there was absolutely no information on their web site
\neither – all very perplexing at the time. Today, there was yet another ad about
\nDataOne, but once more no information about plans or cost. After today’s ad, I
\nchecked their site again. Now they even have an FAQ
\nabout the service<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So does it help? Nope, that’s basically a page about what ADSL<\/a>
\nis. The two most important things you need to know are completely missing: available
\nthroughput and pricing<\/i>. Here’s what the page has to say about it:<\/p>\n

\n

How about Broadband Plans and Pricing?<\/b><\/p>\n

These will be declared very soon. Meanwhile you can fill up the
\nregistration form so that we can work out the logistics for your connection. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

They even have a
\nform<\/a> you can fill up to get a connection even though you don’t know what<\/i>
\nyou’ll get and for how much. (The form is an image. Wow!)<\/p>\n

It contains the helpful clarification:<\/p>\n

\n

* Tariff will be most competitive in the industry <\/p>\n

** Data rate of 256 kbps and above<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That sure tells you a lot, doesn’t it? <\/p>\n

According to Kingsly<\/a>, who has spoken to some
\nBSNL folks, they have yet to decide on download speeds and tariff, and the
\nservice is supposed to launched only around 15 January. So why on earth are they
\nwasting money on advertisements if they haven’t worked out any of the important
\ndetails yet? Who knows? Somebody on the india-gii list thought that it was
\nbecause they wanted to use their ad budget in this financial year. Ah, that
\nexplains it all, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

I’m waiting to be pleasantly surprised by BSNL giving us a 512 Kbps unlimited
\nconnection for about 2000 bucks a month. I’m currently on the Touchtel<\/strike>
\nAirtel Broadband 128 kbps DSL
\nplan<\/a> which costs approximately Rs. 1450 per month with all the fine print
\ncharges included. It’s already saving me about 5000 Rupees every month, but I’d
\nlove to have some higher throughput. That 128 Kbps is called
\n"broadband" in this country is downright shameful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BSNL, our wonderful government telecom provider, has of late been putting out big newspaper advertisements touting its great new broadband service called DataOne. These ads are remarkable in that they contain absolutely no information except that they’re introducing a new service. That, and their web site URL is all. A couple of weeks ago, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madmanweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}