India Broadband

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The Connectivity

The mode of connectivity has remained the same. We still have hanging wires and switches with power supplies that keep on burning and frying. It rains, and the entire network goes down. Recovery period ranges from a few hours to two full days.
About my personal network. It so happened that most of my initial problems were due to a faulty power wiring that the CTO had done initially. It led to overheating of power supplies, which led to frequent failure of connectivity. It took them 6 months to realize this. Moreover, they disconnected me for a whole week just to get that fixed. Some days later, they found that their own power supply was not reaching at optimum capacity at the switch powering my home. I had to give away power from my house to compensate for that. I am not sure how many more switches I am powering from my house… as they take away a power cable from my house to a pole 100 meters from my house. Let us hope, it does not power someone’s AC or something!
Installation is still very expensive. Something that would be coming down in the coming months with competition getting hotter. Just milking the helpless customers while they can.
Local CTO Support

None comes to mind. They fired the only guy I had in my area that comes to my help. I still do not have a CTO in my sector. The nearest concerned office is like 5KM from my house. None of the owners picks up the phone. There is no central number. Only one guy responds and mostly he has either expletives for the Sify people or excuses. Most of the time I have to call the guys in Chandigarh office to get the responses from the CTO himself. Other times someone from Chandigarh office has to come to Panchkula to get my net fixed.
Local Sify Support

Weekends are again nothing. No one is in office on weekends or after 8PM. So, if you have a problem in these times, you are helpless. Other times, they are polite and responsive. However, with little coordination with the CTO, it takes a hell lot of time to get problems solved.
Sify Broadband Call Center

From an earlier average of 60% success rate to just get through to them, it has now reached around 20%. Therefore, I get through to some kind soul in 1 out of 5 tries. Most of the time it happens to be some dumb girl. One or two times, I got hold of some rather helpful guy. However, sitting in the call center, he is as helpless as I am at my house. The best he can do is forward the complaint to the next concerned person. As a result, problems can take 6-10 hrs to be heard. Solution even more so.
Sify Broadband Customer Care

Earlier, it was good. I used to get responses. Just that actually. Nothing actually helped me most of the times. Just false promises and claims. Now, it has gone worse. Many times mails just bounces due to overfilling of their mailboxes. Rest of the times there are no responses. I am myself waiting for replies to mails I sent 2 weeks back.
Sify Broadband Packages

Bad packages. None that suits me at least. They are targeted either at uncle and aunties wanting to call their NRI kids occasionally, or at users who are upgrading from dialup considering they feel low prices a blessing. Also, for people who surf at night and night only. Considering most of the packages are hours or data transfer bonded. The packages with unlimited limits are labeled shared and are only available in speeds of 32 and 48 kbps totally bastardizing the term Broadband in the process. Moreover, considering it is labeled shared, you can get speeds that are much lower than labeled speeds. Also, if we consider TRAI’s recommendation Sify Broadband has only one package that provides actual broadband speeds. On these packages, they charge around Rs. 2.50 per megabyte. So, what they are doing is milking the customers while they can, considering there is no real broadband competition they have in most of the markets. I happen to live in one of them.
Speeds

People on the night package of 128kbps seem to be very happy. But I am stuck with the shared plan of 48kbps+. It manages to touch that speeds during the nighttime. But at daytime, it ranges from 16-24kbps. I complain, they say since it is a shared package I would be getting speeds like these. But the fact is that the package shows 48kbps+ on their website with no indication on what Shared means. What I heard from the Sify Customer Care is that no minimum speed is guaranteed. So you are practically being screwed.
Technical Facts

Their new broadband client is a mess. Uses 7-8megs RAM. Logs off randomly. Does not let me login automatically on boot. Takes 2 clicks to logout and 3 to login. Does not use Windows own components.
No port is apparently blocked. I have used Kazaa and Torrent clients without any problem. But pings to external sites are blocked. So are trace routes. So, if you are a network administrator you would hate it.
Network reliability is crappy. 3 days and my local network have issues with dropping data packets and they still think it is not a big deal. If you ask for better reliability, you are told by the CTOs and Sify Representative to go for BROADBAND CONNECTIVITY which bypasses the CTO and cost INR 50,000. I find that really funny and unfortunate.
Conclusion

The only reason to go for Sify Broadband is if you desperately need a net connection (notice I did not mention broadband connection) and do not have any other alternative.

vishaltayal

If you planning to get new broadband connection, steer clear of Sify Broadband.

While their tariff plans may sound very attractive compared to other ISPs, their business model is purely based on cheating customers & unreliable service. The network keeps on going down every now and then & the customer care number “mysteriously” stops responding during such occasions.

Also, the tariff plans are not what they seem to be. Sify does seem to offer some ‘Night Unlimited Plans’ that should allow unlimited downloads from10 PM to 8 AM. However, you will be amazed to discover your plan abruptly expiring earlier than its stipulated duration. When asked, Sify customer care will give you stupid reasons, never accepting that this is a problem with their billing system!

My personal saga with Sify Broadband

My Sify plan- 400 MB with Night Unlimited unexpectedly expired after just 15 days, despite the fact that I always downloaded after 10 PM. When I contacted Sify Customer Care, I was told to write to customercare@sify.com.

They kept on sending me automated replies, giving me details of my plan, without even bothering to read my mail! After I sent them a strong mail demanding an explanation, an executive from Sify called me & told me that I had logged in at 9:59:40 PM instead of 10 PM (20 seconds earlier!). Therefore, the entire session was considered as “before 10 PM” session & deducted from my 400 MB limit!!

After hearing his “irrational” explanation, I asked him if the opposite of this situation would also hold true. If I connect, let’s say at 10:30 PM & do not log out till 11 AM the next day, would that entire session be considered as “10 PM to 8 AM” session, allowing me to make unlimited downloads till I have logged out. He categorically replied “No” & told me that MBs will start getting deducted from my account as soon as I cross 8 AM in the morning.

So why does the same rule not apply at night? As soon as person crosses 10 PM (which was 20 seconds away in my case), MBs should stop getting deducted from the account.

To summarize, Sify Broadband can go to any extent in trying to make extra money, even if it means indulging in unethical billing & making a fool of their customers. One thing still remains to be seen, how long can such devious business practices continue! Probably, till the time when monopoly of such ISPs in specific areas ends & people have better choices.

Attached Images

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