Jul 08, 2011 10:51 PM
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When it comes to EDGE USB modems, false advertising, inconsistent connections and poor customer service have become the norm.
I can personally attest to the poor quality of all these things as I participated in a two week internship with the Chennai office for MTS shortly after the release of the MBlaze last year.
During my time there, the employees seemed more pre-occupied with taking their two hour long lunch breaks and giving free "sample" recharges to their friends, than getting any actual work done. In addition I noticed that no supervisor ever seemed to be present, and very few of the employees appeared to be doing any actual work. I believe this is why customer service is so poor for MTS.
As for the MBlaze devices themselves, I own two versions; the standard and the one with a micro SD slot. The latter was only useful to me as a storage device.
The MTS MBlaze UI program is a poorly coded copy of the same program used by the Reliance NetConnect. It has many bugs, and can cause my laptop(Virus free, and bearing an i5 intel processor and 6 GB DDR3 RAM) to lag.
The data plans are priced relatively similar to the competitors(namely, Tata Photon+ and Reliance NetConnect) with the unlimited plan being priced at rs.999(quite fair) However you are certainly not getting your money's worth with any of the plans as the promised speed is never delivered.
The key words in an ISP's ads are always in the fine print ex. speeds of upto== 3.1 Mbps!
When they say "up to" they mean that in their lab testing of the device the maximum download speed they reached was 3.1 Mbps, though you're more likely to get around 100kbps at best.
I've been using the MTS MBlaze consistently(between 6-14 hours a day) for the past month, and even when I'm not using the device, it is connected 24/7 to download something or other, and the fastest download speed I have received in this time was approximately 200kbps. Completely mediocre.
Also, it should be noted that I was not in the same location this entire month, I have used the device in the center of Chennai, the outskirts of the same, various parts of Bangalore, the highway between Chennai and Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Kanyakumari(And all the roads leading to these places). To my surprise, the device secured the fastest connection in Kanyakumari and on certain stretches of highway, while it was mediocre at best in all the other locations.
All-in-all, this is a poor product that should be avoided at all costs as I am sure there are much better alternatives available.
