You Broadband . Review on You Broadband

Before I begin writing about You Broadband problems, I must point that some of the ISP problems mentioned by users are baseless. Having worked as a field engineer earlier I know few idiots who don't connect to internet and try to browse and then complain. Sometimes they'll have speed issues because they'll either have virus or torrents or softwares consuming downloads or misperceptions on their subscribed speeds. All that is not an ISP's responsibility.

1. Frequent disconnections. This is about short term to very short term connection losses. Make a voice call and you'll never know when it drops off. It may be fine one day and other day you'll be banging your head against the wall.

   
   




2. "Your problem will be resolved in 24-working-hours". Its FAKE. Sometimes it will be resolved before you complain and sometimes you'll find yourself struggling to get that done. It all depends on where you are and how you are connected. If you are disconnected along with multiple users - you'll get a priority and issue resolved in 4-5 hours. If its your standalone problem, may God help you - the fact is He has more problems to solve other than internet disconnect.

   
   




3. What does "24-working-hours" mean to us? It is 8 hours(10am-6pm) for 3 days. Say you lost your connection like me at 6.15 pm on Friday. Saturday and Sunday is a holiday. And as in one of my worst cases Monday is also a holiday. Now their clock starts on Tuesday 10 A.M. So as per system, if there is no holiday until Saturday, your request will be resolved by End-of-Day Thursday. Now in good cases as I explained earlier, it will be resolved earlier. But in not such a lucky case, but still meeting their Service-Level-Agreement your ETA is Thursday EOD. Calculate that and you find that in this case internet was down for 6-days and 6 hours approx.

   
   




4. Higher disconnection rate: Well 24-working-hours is a standard with most ISPs. Believe me, it is. But there is also another parameter for DOWNTIME. Many ISPs will not have as frequent disconnections as You Broadband has. For example, I used Airtel at my earlier place and they went down like twice in 6 months and that too was server issue and thats why it was resolved quickly. But YOU Broadband goes down like 10 times in 20 days. Thats a very high rate. And say practically 2 times out of that you have to wait for full 24-working-hours to get it resolved. You'll endup with atleast a week disconnected.

   
   




5. Service Credit - Okay you went through all the struggle and want 6 days and 6 hours to be refilled to your account. They'll first deny and on bit of effort they'll give a bit of that to you. Obviously since the name says "You broadband", YOU were responsible for part of the problem. Their online-service credit always rejects service requests numbers - more than obvious(what good a cheater is if they can't cheat)

   
   




6. Speed issues. I had subscribed to its latest 12mbps plan and for the first 20 days of my connection I was a happy person. Then their subscriber base increased and with that I received speeds way below 12 mpbs. After 60 days I consistently faced speed issues. I got speeds as low as 10kbps and usually between 200-400kbps. Its bits per second and not Bytes per second. Complaining and some personnel will come at your place. Then they'll download something at your subscribed speed and take a screenshot. So they prove that the problem is not reproducible and then after 1 hour of that again you start facing the same problem. You'll know that you were made a fool by these by temporarily resolving the issue(by changing pool or opening bandwidth, etc). But you can't do anything about that. YOU are responsible for fooling yourself. ANOTHER POINT: You Broadband does not even have a good version of "Speed Test" on their site. They use a trial version from OOKLA(losers .really sucks for any professional co.). In fact it always shows speed way below subscribed speeds(even when it was alright). Ideally thats supposed to be correct to check speeds from POP and should show above 80% of subscribed speed - it never does.

   
   




7. Contention ratio: They have a maximum contention ratio 1:30 for unlimited home users and 1:20 for unlimited business users. That is 1:8 and 1:1 respectively for Reliance, 1:4 and 1:1 for Airtel. So in case of max usage I will get max(12mbps /30= 400Kbps).that explains speed issues that I faced.

   
   

Also they have multiple plans to confuse you, sometimes costlier plans at lower speeds. Well obviously they believe in "cheating consumers" as their fundamental right. For example checkout the site link below:

At the time of writing this article they these 2 plans - how do you justify the price difference(110 with no other details)

YOU ECLIPSE 899-N -(1 month - 2 Mbps Upto 8 GB, thereafter 256 Kbps) Price Rs. 992

HURRICANE YOU(1 month - 12 Mbps Upto 25 GB, thereafter 1 Mbps) Price Rs. 1102

https://youbroadband.in/tariffplans/ahmedabad_broadbandplans.php

Conclusion is: If you are complaining about You, YOU are responsible. Don't ever take this connection.

Note: Mention about Reliance/Airtel is purely coincidental. This text does not promote those, I advise readers to use their own judgement.