Airtel – What Ails Thou?

by: admin - July 26th, 2011   Filed under: Reviews, Tech News Add Comment

This post describes my not-so-happy experiences with one of India’s so called leading ISPs – aka Bharti Airtel.

When we moved to Noida 2.5 years ago, I looked for an ISP to satisfy our internet needs. Being an ardent supporter of BSNL, I went with BSNL and was not disappointed. The connection was steady and fast for approximately a year before problems happened – wrong billing, frequent disconnections and lazy customer support. I must say that in the end, they apologized and made things right. However, I quit and went with Airtel.

I chose the 4 Mbps plan from Airtel and connection was good till they messed up my profile on their DSLAM, reduced my connection speed drastically and further, lied to me that I reached my FUP limit – when in reality I was far away from even coming any where close to it.
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Top US ISPs Poised to Adopt Graduated Response to Piracy

by: admin - June 24th, 2011   Filed under: Safety, Security, Tech News Add Comment

Some of the country’s largest Internet service providers are poised to leap into the anti piracy fight in a significant way.

After years of negotiations, a group of bandwidth providers that includes AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are closer than ever to striking a deal with media and entertainment companies that would call for them to establish new and tougher punishments for customers who refuse to stop using their networks to pirate films, music and other intellectual property, multiple sources told CNET.

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[Since when did ISPs have the obligation to police the internet? In other news, the demand for non-US encrypted VPNs has soared....]

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Usage Based Billing is a Joke and a Major Scam.

by: admin - June 18th, 2011   Filed under: Tech News Add Comment

It always amazes me how large corporations can never get enough money and constantly surpass the line between good business sense to complete corporate greed. For over a decade, Internet Service Providers have been providing unlimited Internet usage at a relatively reasonable price. Today, these same corporations no longer provide unlimited Internet usage and have imposed draconian data caps. They have moved from unlimited data transfer to a mere 80 gigabyte limit for $65 per month and an additional 1 gigabyte will cost you $1.50, even though it only costs $0.03 for the ISP to transfer it over their networks.

This new policy that the ISPs are trying to implement is called Usage Based Billing (UBB) and it is becoming common in North America and is slowly being adopted world wide.

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[We have had this in India from time immemorial!!! Now ISPs here have started coming up with Fair Usage Policies. The usage is unlimited but the speed drops after a certain amount of data transfer. For e.g. I have a 4 Mbps ADSL connection with a 30 GB data limit, after which speed drops to 256 Kbps for the remainder of the month. And yeh, I pay approximately USD 34 a month for this. Long live greedy Indian ISPs. Oh well, how I miss you Chunghuwa Telecom of Taiwan - the best ISP I have ever used so far in my life.]

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[US] IP-Address Is Not a Person, BitTorrent Case Judge Says

by: admin - May 4th, 2011   Filed under: Safety, Security, Tech News Add Comment

A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. may spell the end of the “pay-up-or-else-schemes” that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person.

In the last year various copyright holders have sued well over 100,000 alleged file-sharers in the United States alone. The purpose of these lawsuits is to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers, and use this information to negotiate a settlement offer ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

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[Finally, a judge who understands technology and does not buy into the MPAA/RIAA bullshit. Hats off to you sir. May be there is some hope for humanity still left, after all.]

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FCC Raises the Broadband Bar

by: admin - July 26th, 2010   Filed under: Tech News Add Comment

The Federal Communications Commission has drastically increased the minimum upload and download speeds it considers worthy of the word “broadband.” Now, 4 Mbps up and 1 down are the bare minimums; before, they stood at an anemic 200 Kbps for both uploading and downloading. The new definition will like effect the rollout of the commission’s National Broadband Plan.

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[Excellent move from FCC. Are the people at TRAI and all the Indian ISPs listening? In India, the pathetic speed of 256kbps is defined as broadband. Rather, should it not be called fraudband?]

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