MTNL

MTNL 3G Jadoo has established itself as a strong player in the race for 3G supremacy. Great focus on better pricing has been the forte of this service provider. Getting the early bird advantage, MTNL has been able to attract the enthusiasts who wanted to test out 3G for themselves.

Availability

As can be expected, there is a tieup between the Govt players, MTNL and BSNL over the 3G availability issue. MTNL is mainly available in Delhi and Mumbai, whereas in other areas the network switches over to the BSNL. This would mean that MTNL could be considered to have a fairly large network.

Ease of acquiring services

One can avail of MTNL 3G services on an existing as well as a new SIM. Both the new and the older SIM have to be upgraded to the 3G network using the trump activation coupon worth Rs 49. This coupon basically upgrades the existing services to 3G network for the lifetime and gives a talktime value of Rs 12 as well.

After recharging through the activation coupon, the user may opt to buy a data tariff plan or go along with the standard usage charge as levied by the subscriber. The new SIM, recharge coupons, activation coupons, etc are available from MTNL Sanchar Haat and certain resellers across the area.

Plans

As is expectated from a Govt player, the plans are very consumer friendly and a result extremely easy on the pocket. Plans are starting from the very nominal Rs 50 bracket which gives the user 60 MB data usage cap and go upto Rs 1650 which gives unlimited usage of the 3G network. MTNL also has plans which can be considered as interwoven entity of the data usage, voice, video calls and even SMS. The plans fromMTNLare essentially valid for 30 days.

Once the user has finished the proposed data cap of the plan, he can still enjoy the 3G network facilities on a pay as per you go model at 1p/10KB for the remainder of the validity period. Additional data coupons are also available which give the more extravagant data users, more data usage with lesser validity period. These may be picked up the people who have their usage pattern revolving more around the heavy data usage pattern rather than the other services.

Value added services

Value added services over MTNL are more or less restricted to video calls, video on demand, live arti, video portal -- which are all video call based. However great the plans and pricing be, there is nothing much to write home about the value added services part for this particular service provider.One might argue that these VAS can be accessed from 3rd party sites using the normal browser, but the cumulative data usage rates in those scenarios would make the viewing or usage too expensive to be practically used.

Performance

We tested the MTNL performance in Delhi over the Android and Symbian OS based phones. For Android, the average download speed was 0.75 Mbps and the max download speed observed in the evening was 1.16 Mbps. The average upload speed was a tad bit less than that at 0.5 Mbps and the maximum uploads speed was observed to be 1 Mbps in the evening again.

For the Symbian OS powered phones,the tests were done suing the dslreports online speed benchmark test. The average upload/download speed was a mere 0.17Mbps and the peak value was observed to be 0.2 Mbps which was in the evening.