Thread: What is the best ISP for Small Business in Mumbai?

Hi,

Need some advice from the experience that everybody has in the forum community.

I am planning to open a small office with about 10 employees in Mumbai catering small business in software (product) development and then slowly we will be doing business via an internet website (e-commerce). I will need a good broadband connection. From the horror stories, I am unable to decide what to opt for. I have been using MTNL at my home and do not have any problems, however the connection is not stable 24/7 and their customer service is definitely not professional level.

Now I am talking about losing money if my internet stays down more frequently. Are there any ISP providers that offer business services with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) (like they would fix the downtime within some reasonable amount of time like say 15 mins) and they would guarantee uptime in the range of higher 90%s through out the year 24/7 or they pay fine for not meeting the SLA.

I know it might be too much to ask for in a "developing-country" as many of the ISP "sales-people" have put it in front of me , but I also know there are lot of small businesses running out of India's garages and even bedrooms. Just want to know how do they tackle these dis-connectivity problems. It will help me and other people who mostly deter from starting an internet-based business due to lack of communication infrastructure, or they just think so, in India.

I thought I would ask if someone wants to share this information. I would really appreciate if you can take out some time and give some tips which would prevent me and dozen other Entrepreneurs from re-inventing the wheel or even change our thought process by simply knowing something we are not aware of!

Thanks for your time.
Best Regards,
Devang Kamdar

PS: Admins/Mods Please move the thread to apt forum as I am not sure what is the right forum to post this questions but it would be great if its exposed to maximum people as the topic is not very specific, yet, needs input from very specific forums. Thanks.

If you are concerned about downtime, you can subscribe to two different connections. Say one from MTNL and another from Airtel. You will be able to use the secondary connection and stay online in case of line failure.

Thanks meetdilip, thats a good workaround ... but there has to be a more concrete solution ... what if both the providers and down? Or for that matter 3 or 4 providers are down? Its very much possible in rains in Mumbai.

There are lot of medium-sized businesses (mostly MNCs) operating out of Mumbai who do not face a downtime of more than 5 minutes, this is by experience having worked for one of them. They do shed out lot of money to guarantee that (not as much as the Bigger MNCs who shed out millions to have the leased lines setup). I am kicking my rear for not finding out how it worked while I was still employed there

But I am looking forward to more inputs from small, very small and even Micro Small (Micro-ISVs esp) for whom downtime directly maps to bad customer service which maps to losing customers which maps to losing $$$ directly about how creatively they have tackled these problems. Or even if there are consultancies that help you start your own stuff and guide you in these matters.

Thanks.