Sign the Airtel Broadband Fair Usage Petition here
Hello to all the visitors who come here looking for advice on the best broadband connection available in the Indian market. We are however going to advice you against getting Airtel services for the following reasons: - The average tariffs charged by this provider are higher than other Internet Service Providers.
- The connection is bundled with a landline connection that you may not require. And almost all the tariff plans are bundled with 'free minutes' and/or 'Free Airtel to Airtel landline calls'. This is a mantra used by the company to justify the higher cost of the packages while knowing that most customers are never going to use them.
- Recently, Airtel has implemented a fair usage policy on all unlimited connections. Airtel reduces the effective quality and speed of the connection by half once a certain data limit is reached. These limits are pretty low and have been criticized by existing Airtel customers around the country.
- Inferring from the Airtel Fair Usage Policy (Airtel Fair Usage Policy) one can understand that :-
- "A small number of users" are those who use more than a mere 10-13% of data usage.
- A "generous usage level is" = 10-13% data usage.
- Even slow speeds like 128/256/384/512kbps can impair Airtel's network performance.
- A data usage of more than 10-13% will result in customer being penalised by reduced speeds by upto 50%.
- In the age of Gbps and Mbps, Airtel has decided to reduce of speeds by 50% in 128/246/348/512kbps Unlimited plans.
- While these unlimited connections have been placed under the company's new 'Airtel Fair Usage Policy', the charges for all these connections have been increased. These tariffs were already on a premium when we compare the tariff plans of rival service providers. This capping on the data/speed makes these plans highly unsuitable and very costly for the avid users that like to use modern internet services such as video streaming, open source software downloads and even voice chat. The reduction in speed leads to a higher cost in terms of electricity consumed to get the same work done. The per MB costs of usage more than double up when the power consumption is added up.
- Airtel has also started blocking VoIP traffic for all its users. This has been done without any relevant information given to the end users. This blocking of specific traffic is illegitimate and the absence of information from the ISP reflects the understanding of guilt.
- Airtel has converted a large number of its customers to the unlimited plans by recommending these UL connections to 'heavy downloaders'. This marketing strategy has definitely paid off now. Airtel is using the excuse of this customer base to apply their just implemented Airtel Fair Usage Policy.
- Airtel has also been bold enough to quote the policy as a recommendation/guideline from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The said policy was a one-liner recommendation in a response to a consultation paper by the regulator. Airtel went ahead and implemented the policy soon after submitting the same to the regulator. It is highly doubtful if the regulator has given their nod/approval to such a policy. The ISP has been bluntly posing as a moral implementer of the regulator's 'guidelines'. If any such approval was given by the regulator, it is yet to be made public. Of course, the company did not bother to alert the customer beforehand about the implementation of the policy. A lot of customers came to know about it only after their internet speeds were reduced to half of the original speeds promised by their connections.
- We acknowledge that the service, customer support of Airtel Broadband services is above average but the breach of trust and dominating and monopolistic policies make this ISP highly avoidable as per us. They might go ahead and implement any more customer harming policies in the future and may even go up to the length of falsely quoting regulatory approvals.
In simple words, we the existing customer base of Airtel Broadband has lost our faith in the company and we would like to warn you before you go ahead and get an Airtel Broadband Connection.
Join the group. Show your protest. Time for Airtel to prove that they are different from shits like Sify Broadband. |
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