The capital of India’s most literate state, and of God’s own country. But the Internet revolution seems to have passed the southern tip of the country by. No dotcom frenzy—there was only one dotcom hoarding visible, and that too just outside the airport, no Internet madness, but if you really listen, you can see the dotcom lingo slowly creeping into everyday conversation. Unlike in the other cities, there are no local ISPs here. Only three national ISPs—VSNL, Satyam, and Dishnet operate here. And at a time when ISPs are outdoing each other in announcing and advertising newer and cheaper packages, the only advertisement we saw in the local newspapers was on one day for Dishnet’s five-year package for women.

So, why did we choose to check out Trivandrum, or Tiruvananthapuram as its current name goes? We needed two cities to check out, outside of the top seven. Being the capital of the most literate state in the country helped. Thus, it became the ninth city to be part of this shootout, with Chandigarh being the eighth.

We started our tests on a Sunday night and carried through till Tuesday afternoon. The fact that there were only three ISPs enabled us to carry out more rounds of tests. We also did away with the download tests, and instead checked only for connectivity and browsing.

Purchase

Where do you buy an account? Satyam mentioned three sales points in the city. That seemed a bit too low, particularly because all of them were located on one side of the city. Dishnet seemed to have a wider choice, and the helpdesk referred us to an outlet nearest to where we were located. Dishnet also has one Internet hub in the city, where women can register for their new five-year package. VSNL has a customer service center in the city from where you can buy the account. Advantage Dishnet.

Installation charges

If you ask the Dishnet dealer to come and install the account at your place, they’ll charge you an installation fee of Rs 150. Alternately, you could go to their shop and get the registration done free of charge. If you opt for this, remember to change the password immediately. The same applies to Satyam as well—Rs 150 installation charges if you opt for their personnel to come and install at your place. That’s a bit steep, if you were to ask us, and there’s no reason why you should pay that amount when you can install it yourself.

Helpdesk

Moving on to the helpdesk, Satyam and Dishnet have good helpdesks that were operational both during and outside regular office hours. Once we got one of the ETH numbers busy, but the second number was picked up instantly. VSNL was a different story altogether. Although the helpdesk number kept on ringing, most of the time, no one seemed to pick up the telephone. We were able to get through only once, on Tuesday morning, during our final attempt. Disadvantage VSNL.

Connectivity

We did a total of nine rounds of connectivity tests over three days, both during the day and the night. In each round, each ISP was tried five times in succession before moving on to the next.

In every one of those tests barring one, Satyam connected at the first attempt. In the one attempt where Satyam failed, it said "wrong password" a couple of times, but finally connected.

Dishnet was able to connect at first try only in two of those nine rounds. Another two times, we were able to connect on the second and third tries respectively. Once we were disconnected from the server during login, and the remaining four times, what we got for our toils was the busy signal.

VSNL gave us the busy signal five times out of nine, and an authentication failure after entering the password once. Incidentally, we were using an account registered in Delhi. Of the remaining three rounds when we were actually able to connect, we got a bad connect once, with no data transfer taking place. Incidentally, with an older 14.4 kbps modem, VSNL was the only ISP to sometimes connect at 9,600 bps also. The others always connected at 14,400 bps. Massive advantage Satyam.

Conclusion

The choice of ISP for Trivandrum seems obvious enough. Both Dishnet and VSNL need to upgrade their services in this city, before they can catch up with our choice—Satyam.