I have been on Airtel Broadband ever since I moved to Gurgaon in December 2004. It has been a good experience on Airtel. Especially when I compare it to Sify Broadband. However, the last month has been a revelation.

The company announced double speeds at night scheme. However, when I check it at my place, I find it hard to believe if that actually is happening at my place. The best I get during the daytime is around 17 KBps when I should be getting around 32 KBps. At night, the speed improves to around 25 KBps when I should technically be getting 64 KBps.

A little loss in delivery of the speed is acceptable to me. But less than half of the speeds, I should be getting? Not good. Maybe I should start Blogging on my ongoing experiences with Airtel Broadband as I did it with Sify. Or maybe I should just harass the customer care people who have the usual suggestions… Scan for viruses/worms, clean cache, restart, reinstall. What crap?

I do not need their crappy online bandwidth tester when I can see what speeds I am getting on my download manager. And I do not need to listen to stupid comments that maybe my PC is infected with a worm, which is eating all my bandwidth. I am a smart enough guy to know that speeds suck from their side and they are doing nothing about it.

Maybe instead of spending money on keeping Shah Rukh Khan advertising for them, they can invest more in keeping their existing customers happy. Instead, I get spam calls on my Airtel telephone in the middle of the night telling me about their new caller tunes feature which would enable me to let the people calling me listen to the latest Emraan Hashmi starrer movie’s song.

Dear Uncle Gates

I am glad you came here to India. We welcome you here on your visit. There is a saying in Sanskrit, “Athithi Devo Bahava” which means “The Guest to be treated as God”.

Of course, you are our guest. Beyond the huge media hype and hoopla that you are going to generate, no one is going to focus on your crappy products and restrictive licenses that your company forces to sign up for. Well, I believe that you are in the habit of spying too. Entire files are secretly uploaded to your centre to find out which software is installed on the user’s computers. Not to mention the huge “security patches” to beat the “previous security patches”- they all end up flat with viruses.

Uncle Gates,I am sorry to hear that Google is snipping at your heels and the threat of Governments to shift to Open Source software. Your visits here are not motivated to see Taj Mahal (a glorified grave) but to promote your restrictive licensing policies.

I believe that your handouts from your foundation are more in the nature for media gimmicks rather than genuine concern. Specially because the way you have dominated the market by coercion, buyouts, out of court settlements and unbashedly promoting your Windows which remains a sterling example of how NOT to code a software.

Uncle Gates, your visit is inoppurtune because it’s a BIG body blow to Open Source Software and proponents of Linux. Because we don’t have that kind of money power to make the media sing to our tunes. By that shouldn’t leave you complacent. People like me are going to spread the word.

Uncle Gates, if you are not aware, there is a whole website dedicated to your endeavours www.fuckmicrosoft.com I suggest that you head over there so that you would get some lessons in corporate behaviour.

You presence is ill timed because India is at the threshold of broadband revolution. There would be many people who would be venturing to buy out a brand new computer. I don’t want them to turn into morons using Internet Explorer; unfortunate because they would seriously miss out on the joys of Linux. Specially so when the thrust of the Government is towards E Governance initiatives and massive computerisation. Precious taxpayers money would be spent on supporting leeches like your company.

Uncle Maran is a faithful ally, is it? who would be ever smiling along with you for a photo op?

Uncle Gates, you provoke intense revulsion in my heightened senstivities; I just can’t stand your name or your products.

Hopefully, I would be alive to see your companies’ demise, the end of the domination of desktops market and out of people’s lives. We would see a massive growth of FREE OPEN SOURCE (FREE AS IN FREE BEER) soon. Money can’t buy everything apart from Governments, Media and your famous yatches. It definitely can’t buy FREEDOM. And that is what we shall have it.

Yours Truly,
Tux

The current fascination for 3G services doesn’t abate. I have argued against this time and again because it doesn’t fit in the current scenario.

Wimax in part is being funded by Intel; obviosuly it plans to support it’s chip architechture in the future based on the same. All in the name of profits and obscene profits. For most of the end users, it means escalation of costs for which we have no real use.

The high downloads are mainly for content. It is claimed that 3G services would be able to carry on more voice traffic; this claim can be contested. The current deployment of 3G in Europe hasn’t really excited the consumers. The high costs of the handsets not withstanding.

I have been repeatedly mentioning that it’s the plain vanilla mobile services that’s suffice, specially when we have such pathetic mobile coverage (less than 9%). For most of the users, the current CDMA technology provides decent 100-120kbps. Perhaps the corporate types would love to flaunt their new toys.

This article is in response to the report that Alcatel is planning to set up a research centre in Wimax in Chennai. Rajesh Jain’s blog too mentioned a write up from Wall Street Journal and I quote:

“Subscribers to 3G services still account for a small fraction of cellular-phone users in Europe. But some analysts expect 2006 to be the break-out year for the technology. Ovum, a telecommunications consultancy in London, forecasts that European operators will have registered 63 million 3G subscribers — one in six European cellphone users — by the end of next year, as the sophisticated networks needed to carry the technology finish being rolled out and prices for 3G handsets come down ( Where is the proof?). After the tech-stock bubble burst in 2000, the term “3G” came to embody the once-ballyhooed and then derided notion that phones and multimedia content would “converge.” This convergence is finally happening. Today, users in Europe can watch TV, surf the Web, download music and videos and send video messages on their 3G handsets ( Does this have any relevance for India?).
By contrast, wireless services in the U.S. remain more primitive. ( Typical Wall Street Journal style!)

Beofre I end, the biggest problem is that of security. A BBC story reveals the emergence of Mobile phone viruses. Are the anti virus companies responsible for “leaking out” the viruses? Though it is debatable, the phone viruses affect those handsets which have bluetooth and fancy stuff. I believe, in some way, 3G would accelerate the spread of viruses on mobile phones. (Perhaps Linux can prevent that? Please let me know!)