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Lustful, isn’t it? While BSNL has removed the EVDO announcement from their site, it’s not mentioned on the home-page apparently because it’s still under testing.
Legend
KBps (kilo-bytes)
kbps (kilo-bits)
Mbps (mega-bits)
ISPs always advertise in bits per second, the relation being:
1 KBps = 8 kbps
Performance
Even within the city, the performance depends on your locality.
When I was in another part of Bangalore (BSK Stage 3), it averaged around 30-40KBps.Where I am right now (Malleshwaram), it averages between 60-100KBps (likely to be +100KBps for fast servers like apple.com - as seen above).
Technically, the max supported speed it 2.4 Mbps (mega-bits) but as seen above, you’d better expect between 256 kbps - 1Mbps.
Something to note: BSNL is using a NAT server with the gateway. In other words, BSNL EVDO users share the same internet IP. This causes the following problems:- BitTorrent downloads crawl due to closed ports.
- Rapidshare won’t work due to shared IP conflit. Some bugger or the other will always be downloading something of it.
There’s nothing one can do about it till BSNL decides to give unique IPs for everyone.
Pricing
They took an initial deposit of Rs.1000. After 2 months, I got a bill for Rs.2500 for 2 months usage and advance for the third month. After that, it’s a monthly bill of about Rs.800 (including rental for the EVDO modem).
More info
Since BSNL hasn’t officially started selling EVDO service, there’s very limited information available about this. The folks at bsnlevdo.in are doing a great job for general public with uptodate information on pricing and availability.
Conclusion
I’ve had a pretty good run with their service. Downtimes are occasional and have lasted max of a day. It’s strictly for the casual user right now. Do note that this is the FASTEST wireless internet service available in India right now.
PS: I’ve been meaning to share information on this for a long time. I decided to finally write this article while commenting on this post.
