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ISP Shootout: Trivandrum

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PCQ Bureau
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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

Krishna kumar@Trivandrum

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