So yeah like.. after another eon (that lasted for 2 long years) of staying on a hopeless (in this era) 256kbps, thanks to my (generous?) ISP lowering their prices and introducing new plans, I could afford to make a plunge to half a megabit per second (God! Wonder when I’ll ever make it to a full megabit).
My earlier (2 yrs back) ISP was Sify Broadband, which had horrendous plans of 1500 for a 256kbps unlimited.. like WTF? So I was always locked onto 128 UL or a 256 night UL with a 150mb/day restriction (imagine the pain.. more so that you end up getting days cut off your account for every 150 mb extra data transferred).
Hathway (Mumbai), that is my current ISP, kind of lowered their plans by bringing down 256 Unlimited to 1444/- (3 months) and 512 Unlimited to 1698/- (3 months). So I didn’t mind paying 200 bucks extra for twice the bandwidth.
1 mbps, however, is priced at ~1200/- per month. This, I would have given a go, but not after I came across this line at the end of the tariff plan row for it.. ‘20gb Fair Usage Policy limit’.
Fair Usage Policy, my foot. That’s the new strategy ISPs in India have been using to offer limited connections under the hood of an Unlimited plan. Instead of naming it a 20gb limited 1mbps, they’ll still sell it as Unlimited, with possibly very little of the crowd realizing about this cap. Fair Usage Policy is acceptable in cases where there is seriously an over-usage of bandwidth that would considerably affects other customers. Setting the FUP cap to something around 50-70gbs is something to be called ‘fair’ enough. Otherwise, it only looks suitable of a plan for the end-user who pays the hefty amount simply to load pages faster or enjoy a faster stream of online videos. Those considering filling up on their anime or movie collection, would rather be contented on a lower bandwidth than having a nonsensical cap as such.
For my experience on this new 512 kbps plan, I’m getting the usual ~64KB/s download speeds and as for watching Youtube, the sole reason I switched for, it still won’t offer me a smooth playback of the default low-res 360p videos. Just have to be satisfied the 240p quality plays without buffering anymore, as compared to on 256kbps. Nevertheless, it’s an annoyance to keep selecting 240p every time you load a video (I’m not sure if you can set that as default.)
take 24online. i have 1.5 mbps ul 999 even 1 mbps is available for 699 i think.
24online is just a user management software. Not an ISP. Certain local cable operators buy bandwidth from major Internet providers like Hathway, and start their own local Internet providing business, and use 24online to manage the users and their plans, and allow them to login or logout using it. My own provider was using 24online software with Hathway’s bandwidth until 3 years back, when they switched to the main Hathway company, so now I don’t need any login software, automatically I’m assigned a static IP address when I get online.
You haven’t updated your blog from so long.. =/
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Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks!