Tarun Dua

Finally after running around from piller to post, to BSNL, to Tata Indicom and to whoever would listen to me. I finally got Airtel to give me a 256Kbps(un-limited) Broadband connection. The Airtel guy claimed that this is the last port they had available in this area and I am lucky to get it the connection otherwise I could have waited for months at end for a broadband connection.

The Airtel sales guy insisted that I provide them a copy of my PAN card as this is the new TRAI regulation, so much for the year of broadband.

Airtel happens to be one of those service providers against whom I have seen least number of complaints and their loyal subscriber's actually defend them against criticism. I hope they meet my expectations just as well. Except for them 'spamming' their customers with mindless SMS'es and pre-recorded phone spam messages their service levels are actually better than other players.

Broadband according to TRAI is defined as an always on 256Kbps or above connection. For those of you in computer networking field know that broadband is 'nickname' for the technology leveraging multiple frequencies over the wire ethernet (or wirelessly) instead of just baseband frequency that normal ethernet for a LAN utilizes.

Airtel broadband installation 'engineer' also informed me that they offer an on-demand games service for just another 199 Rupees(+Taxes) and they have over 150 games. Good for them. Not sure how well it compares to gametap. My favorite strategy games seem to be all available at gametap.

One piece of advocacy I have always done is that Internet connectivity in India is always going to have similar usage of broadband as rest of the world, there is no point leveraging the Indian connection for most online services. Create world class services at indian pricing and you'll see an uptake of services. The youth in India are as happy to use youtube or orkut and now facebook as anywhere else in the world. There is little beyond property, classifieds, travel, news, shaadi and naukri that needs to leverage the indian connection, least of all gaming, gamers go where other gamers go.