India Broadband

India Broadband

I became a Sify ’Broadband subscriber in July 2003 only because my local cable wallah who used to supply me ’Broadband’ thru a cat 5 wire became a business associate if Sify.

Before I comment on the quality of sify ’broadband’ one has to understanf that the biz model followed by Sify ensures that they have very little control on quality as that is totally the prerogative of ur last mile operator who is invariably ur cable wallah so be prepared to hear the wail from sify of (what can we do , we try so hard but ur cable wallah does not cooperate crap).

From the time I have become a subscriber my IP address has been changed 5 times as it was assigned to some one else AFTER it was given to me. Since I was the one to complain as I got ’IP conflict’ message & could not login to the internet, I was reassigned a new IP. Till Jan 2004 they had a dynamic lady in charge of customer care who always tried very hard to solve ur problem after she left who has replaced her is invisible and is never available or u r told he is in Chennai???.

Their quality was good initially but after their subscriber base went up, as usual their speed decreased & I was always told ’thumara speed teek hai’ so be prepared to hear that line also. I even had problems like I could not send mail from my vsnl email id ( I am also a VSNL dial up subscriber ) Now this company is notorious for blocking out competitors sites & products. Its only when I wrote to their MD others this was sorted out with a sheepish explanation that it was a temporary glitch !!!!!! From Oct 04 they had another brainwave they have isallowed the the webpage login facility they had & everybody was forced to download a login client s/w.

That by itself was not a bad idea, but what got my goat was it came packaged with a free vaccine from mcafee which everyone was forced to install AFTER uninstalling whatever other anti virus s/w they had !!!!!! What bloody cheek. What about people who had bought legal copies of vaccines of other companies these idiots never bothered about that I have kept a copy of that webpage, only when I made a stink they changed their stance saying that whoever wanted to use other anti virus s/w were welcome to do so but we had to ring up their toll free no.

so that they could ensure an installation of their client without the mcafee module. But alas to my misfortune from the time I have installed their login client I am having trouble as their client clashes with zonealarm pro & many times I am unable to log out my my meter is still ticking away as the so called ’heartbeat option’ where after 10 mins u r automatically logged out. A ’Team Leader’ from their call center called Ranjit Kumar promised to look into this matter and give the lost subscription time but that NEVER materialised, & this joker told me this s/w was tested for a month at Chennai.

So this clearly indicates the quality of manpower that Sify has. And another thing that bothers me is that Does the so called ’login client s/w’ do ONLY that or does it also collect useage & other info on the sly from my machine??? No one @ sify can put my fears to rest. U just cant be too sure nowadays. Also all the engineers & tech office staff who were looking into this problem have quit this company so I am stuck with a service which I can log in but sometimes cant logout !!!!!!!. So I switched over to their ’unlimited’ scheme and I have run into even more problems.

Currently from 31-Oct I have not been able to access these sites
1) https://secure.icicidirect.com/custo...next=tradehome
2) www.cnn.com
3) www.baazee.com
4) www.http://symantec.com/
5) mail.yahoo.com
6) hotmail.com

+ a lot of news media sites. when I rang up their helpdesk I was told the load factor is the problem & nothing could be done abt it. When I sent an email I only got the usual auto reply & nothing more. Regarding the auto reply u will read a LOT of tall claims like ’We work 24X365 days a year to service your requests. Our stated (as per our ISO 9001:2000 Quality Plan Parameter) service level of email response is 90% in 4 Hours and our team ensures it responds well within this service timeframe.’’ but take all this with a TON of salt.
I have timed my internet speed. Using
1) http://promos.mcafee.com/speedometer/test_0150.asp I get the following speeds
21.2 Kbps @1232am
(2.65 KBps)


& the best joke is I can access these sites using my slower VSNL dial up !!!!!!!!!!. Is this another case of sify blocking out some sites??? The turn over of staff in this company is so high that every few months you will be talking to a new
’manager’ or ’engineer’ as individuals they try to be helpful but as a unit they cannot deliver the goods & THATS WHAT U R LOOKING FOR. U wonder what type of management runs this company. Another issue u should dwell on is the pricing of sify ’broadband’ products considering that international bandwidth prices are dropping sharply, Sify has NO business to increase its prices every now and then. Especially when its service is NOT improving. Recently when the govt increased the service tax to 10.2% Sify has increased its prices well beyond the 2.2% difference. This is TOTALLY unjustified.

Also note TATA Indicom DID NOT raise its prices beyond the differential of 2.2% So all in all the quality depends on ur last mile operator read ’cable wallah’ and an indifferent sify help desk & management. I would not like to recommend this ’service’ to any one. I am currently contemplating switching over to MTNL ADSL or TATA Indicom broadband which is also available with my cable wallah in Mumbai.

After so many years of experience with Sify, I notice that Sify seems to have a Standard Operation Procedure with regards to customer complaints.

1) You are the first person to have this complaint else,
2) Customer is always wrong. else,
3) Customer’s problem is always ’normal’ else,
4) There is a virus problem in customer’s machine. else,
5) There is a problem with the OS on the customers machine else,
if nothing else works then it’s ’under observation.’ ’’ & so it rests!
So please be ready to hear these lines repeatedly

PS The following sites can be used to check ur net speed

http://promos.mcafee.com/speedometer/test_0150.asp