ISP Shootout: Calcutta

The City of Joy seems to have caught on to the dotcom

bandwagon. Driving in from the airport, we could see huge billboards - lining

roadsides, atop buildings, and in any other place they could find - advertising

Websites that dealt with everything from entertainment to the stock market, and

anything in between. But the ISP scene is just catching up with all this frantic

dotcom activity.

We checked out four ISPs here - VSNL, Satyam, Caltiger, and

OnlySmart. We didn’t check out Mantra and Sigma Online, because they’d just

started their services in the city. OnlySmart is a local ISP. Caltiger started

off in Calcutta, and is now expanding to Mumbai, Bangalore, Siliguri,

Jamshedpur, and Guwahati.

Purchase



Satyam and OnlySmart have hoardings all over the city and you
just need to dial the numbers mentioned there. We did face a problem with

OnlySmart, though. The vendor to whom we were referred to by the helpdesk

refused to sell us a 20-hour account. More calls to the helpdesk led us to a

vendor who had to go to the OnlySmart office to get a 20-hour account for us.

With Satyam, however, things went smoothly.

For Caltiger, there’s no such thing as buying an account,

since it’s a free ISP. You just go to their Website and get your free account

registered. Then, you download their adbar and install it. To use the account,

you dial through the adbar application and get connected. The adbar docks to the

top of your screen.

Registration and installation



We got our Caltiger free account registered easily enough,
but couldn’t use it immediately, as it kept on giving authentication failure.

It could be used only on the second day. Caltiger later informed us that during

the period we were running our tests, they had declared shutdown for upgrades,

which could probably be the reason for this.

OnlySmart gives you an installation CD, but the dialer

installed by the CD simply refused to work for registering our account. Their

helpdesk couldn’t give a satisfactory solution to our problem either. So, we

had to use another ISP to go to their Website and register our account.

Help!



Both Caltiger and OnlySmart have good helpdesks. You can call
them up anytime, though you have to wait a few rings before the call is picked

up.

When we came to Satyam, an elaborate automated answering

system directed us to the helpdesk, after a series of routings and key

punchings. And the person we finally reached seemed to be in a hurry to get the

call over with. As for VSNL, the helpdesk number was either permanently engaged

or kept on ringing with no one to answer the call. This prevailed throughout the

day. Definitely a disadvantage.

Performance



Only Satyam connected in the first attempt every time.
Caltiger and OnlySmart gave fairly good connectivity and most of the times,

connected in the first attempt. With VSNL, we could easily connect during the

morning and noon, but towards the evening, we almost always got a busy signal.

Sometimes, we were repeatedly prompted to verify the password.

That brings us to transfer rates, where actual performance is

revealed. For VSNL, we got fair throughputs when we could connect - that is,

during the morning and noon. Satyam gave fair throughputs throughout the day.

The trend seemed to be that you had a little fall in throughput as the day

progressed.

OnlySmart also gave us steady transfer rates across the day.

We experienced frequent disconnects in the evenings, but conditions improved

after 9:00 pm. On Caltiger, we got fair browsing speeds, but when it came to

file transfers, the experience was not the same. However, we need to see their

performance after the upgrade to be able to pass judgment.

The verdict



Calcutta’s peak Net surfing time seems to be the evenings,
with many ISPs giving the busy signal or lower throughputs. VSNL needs to

improve the number of telephone lines significantly. And a more helpful helpdesk

would definitely be a help. OnlySmart’s performance in file transfer was among

the best, but they could have done better in their installation software and in

the capability of their helpdesk to handle tough customer situations. That

leaves Satyam as our choice in the City of Joy.

Ashish Sharma@Calcutta