Oct 24, 2007 02:30 AM
12615 Views
After reading several negative reviews pertaining to Alliance Bband, I decided to weigh in and contribute my 2 cents worth:
Initiation...
I had BSNL 256kbps ( Home 900 UL) connection before this. However, due to frequent outages, disconnections and overbilling I decided to go in for a different ISP. This was after 1 yr of using BSNL dataone. I have used Cable net numerous times and I know it is quite unreliable and slow...at best. Even so, I had no other ISP to turn to , as my area did not have Airtel (Ballygunge, Kolkata). So, I crossed my fingers and signed up. To my surprise, they were ready with the installation and everything was up and running in 2 hours. Compared to the relative ineptitude of BSNL and other ISPs, I was pleasantly surprised.
*The Test by Fire...
*After a week, due to an especially violent thunderstorm and the subsequent waterlogging (Kolkata's l337 drainage dates back to the british era).. my connection was down. It is times like this when the true nature of the company's attitude towards the customer is revealed. Again, I was pleasantly surprised to see 2 of the ISP technicians scaling pole nearby within an hour of me making a phone call to the ISP. My line was repaired in 2 hours or so. The technicians actually waded out into the waterlogged street in their shorts to repair the line. I was truly impressed by the service.
*Gaming Goodness...
*Being an ardent gamer, I really wanted to check out the latency of the overall internet connection. My previous experience with BSNL had been abysmal to say the least. My pings were in the range of 300 to 3000 (no kidding). At night WITHOUT FAIL, it used to cross the 1K mark when I pinged google. So, I tried pinging to google. Wonder of wonders, my pings were at 112-150ms avg. So I fired up my copy of BF2 and checked to see how the "relevant" pings were and I was ecstatic to see that the ping to my fav server was a miniscule 175ms. I was overjoyed...aaahhh!! LAGLESS GAMING!!
More good news...
After using their service for a month, I suddenly saw that my speeds had suddenly increased significantly. I thought it was a quirk in their bandwidth limiting system, however, when I checked my service status check screen, it turned out that they had introduced a new plan of 384Kbps Unlimited which cost the same as my old plan, and they had reduced the price of the old plan (256kbps UL). So, I got 384Kbps for as little as Rs789 a month.. inclusive of all charges. Mighty good i'd say. :D
Final Thoughts...
Now I live in Bangalore and unfortunately, Alliance Broadband doesnt have its services here. I have subscribed to Airtel's Unlimited 999 plan and I must say that I really feel like crying when I have to pay Rs 1200 for a 256Kbps connection (which incidentally has some latency issues). So, however bad the services of alliance have been before, they are EXEMPLARY now. If these guys provide internet in ur location, close ur eyes and GO FOR IT.
