Thread: Wireless broadband services and wireless networking

Hello members

Its our duty to inform every one about what we know and have experienced as far as broadband in India goes to get better services and good value for money in future by switching to better and more reliable options.

This is going to be a very long post so if you do not have time to read this please book mark this page and come back later to have a read through as this post is going to be an eyeopener for you.

We in India have a lot of ISP's who have their local cable operators taking care of their end users and providing last mile connectivity and the largest one among them is Sify. The problem with sify is that their connections are not stable due to the long cables they run for miles and miles and these run through electricity poles, telephone poles and what not. These cables develop snags more often then not and it takes ages for them to sort out the broken cables... Local cable operators also some times cut each others cables due to business rivalary but who suffers? Its the end user you amd me and also the cable operator in the long run as people look for better alternatives.

Sify and other cable operators have now started providing wireless connections to the customers now and I owuld like to explain it to you all how this works..

I wen around Delhi checking out wht they are upto and gathered a lot of information in the process and also clicked a few pictures in the process..

Below is what a cable operator installs at his end :











The equipment you see in the above pictures is called BTS which is a radio which works at 2.4Ghz frequency and broadcasts signals to be recieved at the customer end using the CPE which I will talk about at the end of this post.

This is more of a cable operators interest who is looking to go wireless...
The cable operators I went to visit are using some locally made crap which is being sold to them saying that it would hold hundreds of customers from one base stations... well it does NOT and it just goes bust after 25-30 customers are connected simultaniously ... the only base station I have seen working perfectly fine myself is from a company called Ubiquiti (UBNT) as they are the only ones not producing a cookie cutter product and there is no interference what so ever while using their products. The BTS from Ubiquiti does cost a little bit more then the others but as we all know there must be a reason and the only reason I could see is that it just works and others dont.

I will explain in complete details about the customer end premises equipment and what a customer can do to get the equipment of their choice instead of being given a substandard product which will only cause problems later on if not instantly.

We have got a deployment going on at 4 different locations with 100-150 connections each from a single BTS at all these 4 locations and they are all using different BTS brands and different CPE and I am keeping a track on whats going on... the deployment should be complete by tommorow or day after at th most and I will be able to provide you guys some first hand information.. Now the question is what do we do with this information? well you are the one who is going to pay the cable operator for installation and thats nothing but the cost of the customer end equipment and if you are paying for it from your own pocket then why not ask your cable operator t buy the one which will run smoothly and have no trouble or dropped connections? And if you are a cable operator it will only add to your reputation if you use the best equipment and we will find out in a day or two about every aspect of their performance and I will also put up a few pictures for all of us to have furthur discussion on this.

In the mean time I have a few pictures from one of the cable operators CPE whcih he is installing in his area and this is the cheapest one in the market but does not have a brand name... shouldnt take many guesses about its performance... but instead of making things up lets wait for the results

Here is the cookie cutter product :





Who gains and who looses when a cable operator tries to save a little money? well believe it or not its the cable operator who is at loss... it does save him a little bit of money but the customer starts getting connection problems as the subscriber number rises and this makes their customer switch to another broadband provider... the customer's woes end with the switch but the cable operator looses valuable market share and a customer who will never return back to him.

We shall start getting some test results by tommorow and I will post them with as much details as possible in this thread itself so please do return back to see what the outcome is to keep yourself from being cheated.

Lets show these cable operators our consumer power... and Cable operators lets choose the product that is right and stop thinking short term.

Post reserved

Very Informative article adminji ... Thanks a lot

Does this apply to BSNL, reliance,and TTSL?
Waiting to hear more i though I am a mere customer.

All the service providers which u have mentioned is providing the same service but under different brand names..

A good piece of info.

I am using Tata Wimax. Is it in some relation to me also

Yes it is

Thats good to hear buddy....

Seems cable ops are goin hi-tech to gen Next...

Thanks for d info

Iam using Tata Indicom wimax service and iam also facing the same suitation i need to spend a minimum of one hour inorder to connect to the network, by the time i connect to the network i will lose the patience and close my system. Is there any ways to change the box which is provided by TataIndicom to a better quality box.

Hey Friend
I am using ADSL Broad Band... I tried Reliance Wi Max some time back... but it doesnt worked out well in our area... so my better advice is to chage to a different ISP....

The QOS of ISPs in India change streetwise and area wise within the same state. So if one finds Reliance WiMax to be cumbersome, it maybe a lifesaver for the other. My advice would be do to some homework of our own and then select an appropriate ISP for our needs.

But, the ISP who gives service uses the same infrastructure for all the location so how can the quality differ...thats how i did for reliance i was not able to recieve a gud amount of signal even after fixing the reciever at the maximum height possible.... Seems its my fate not to go for reliance....

i got reliance wimax, and considering the fact that its pretty consistent, im assuming the POE equipment they use is half decent and I live here in Nerul a couple hundred feet away from the tower thats next to SIES college. I can take pics if you guys want.

Originally Posted by mojojo

But, the ISP who gives service uses the same infrastructure for all the location so how can the quality differ...thats how i did for reliance i was not able to recieve a gud amount of signal even after fixing the reciever at the maximum height possible.... Seems its my fate not to go for reliance....

Was there any reliance towers in your area? I mean even after fixing the antenna at great heights if u are not to catch up with the signals of Reliance, then i doubt the existence of any nearby towers...

To My knowledge the area around my house is surrounded by trees not that much height and the added factor is the distance of the reliance tower which is 550Mts from my home..

Originally Posted by aumkar22

i got reliance wimax, and considering the fact that its pretty consistent, im assuming the POE equipment they use is half decent and I live here in Nerul a couple hundred feet away from the tower thats next to SIES college. I can take pics if you guys want.

I am interested in the pics, please post them over here !!

Hey Cool Techie....
I am in a govt residential area so most pvt players are restricted so the way to get pvt players inside is a bit tough so wireless is d only solution.... there are 5 towers around my res. complex and no tower is inside the area... so its a head ache for me...

Which is your current ISP? BSNL? EVDO of BSNL?

Am using BSNL Dataone ADSL BroadBand

well is can the wireless network called broadband? wireless network... means reliance usb modem plugged to laptop or dextop.. tata plug to surf whiz.. and all same types right?? vodaphone, idea airtel all are providing.. but frankly speaking.,. i dont think we can say them or categorize under broad band..

my personal experience. i brought tata indicom plug to surf whiz... first is the connectivity problem ,, second is the upload or download limits are very less and above all.. speed is crap... believe me.. if u compare both.. one which u get proper broad band installed at home.. cable one.. n this small usb toys.. u will surely regret.. on top.. the money.. thts main point.. like crap speed, less connectivity n also less downloads.. still they are charing more.. once i calculated .. when i had tata wireless.. it proved to me costly on top less downloads. n customers always expect high speed internet.. which is not there in any .. utter non sense...


i hope i m talking in right direction/ topic.. :lol:

Wireless connections are not at all reliable. It is also safer to invest on wireline solutions if feasible. WiMax solutions from Reliance and Tata look promising..

the cpe picture u posted admin, i saw the same thing installed at the top of my apartment building, and it was like IN RUINS WITH RUST!!! no guessing about the quality being offered by it !

i personally went to the dude who was getting his internet connection thru that receiver, and damn, it was going on and of on and off... even a simple youtube page took ages to load!!
i wud have posted the picture but naturally, it doesn't exist today!

you should have taken it when you had a chance, you would have had some proof for the cable operators on the state of equipment

Now that does prove th point that these cable operators are using substandard products which are mere copies of the real stuff and not even good copies and this is why we get unstable connections with frequent disconnections being a daily affair.

We shall soon get some results on the products being used watch this thread this is going to be one of the l9ongest threads on the forum and an eyeopener at the same time.

Most of the time it does. They want to make a maximum profit in whatever they want. It is usually termed as cost cutting.