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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Internet in India

Broadband

Getting broad internet connection in India still seems to be issue. From discussion forums and blogs, Airtel seems to be comparatively good. Here is my order of preferred ISPs: Airtel, BSNL … (other ISPs) and lastly Tata Indicom. However the problem with Airtel is they are seems to be not giving new connections anymore in many places. BSNL - they and their process takes time. In my place Airtel guys said “currently there is no feasibility and it will take another one month to give new connection”. BSNL said they will give telephone connection immediately but broadband will take minimum 3 months.

Wireless

I gave up on broadband connection and tried to get wireless connection. The only concern which stopped me going for wireless is its initial cost. Airtel USB modem costs 6K and Reliance costs around 4K.

Airtel GPRS - Mobile Office

Few days back I came to know about Airtel’s GPRS scheme “Mobile Office”. No installation charges, no documentation, no application, no waiting…

To use you need a phone with GPRS support with Airtel PostPaid connection and software to share the internet with your PC/laptop. The plan I opt is unlimited download and Rs.140 per week. It converts into 700(140x5) per month which is ~equivalent to a rate of 128KB unlimited broadband connection.

Speed

So far I am getting good speed. The max speed I got is 33KB. This is more than enough for me to browse and download small applications.

Activation, Deactivation is done through SMS

Action

SMS Number

Content

To Activate

6123

MO

To get GPRS settings

2567

ALL

To unsubscribe

222

MO CNCL

However for my Windows Mobile I have to manually configure the GPRS settings. Start->Settings->Connections->GPRS is where you have to create a new connection if you want to configure you Windows Mobile. The only thing you have to input is “Access Point” and the value is “airtelgprs.com”.

To share the internet connection with your PC, click Start in your mobile and select “Internet Sharing”. This will disable the “Windows Mobile” activesync connection and creates a new Network connection – “Windows Mobile based Internet Connection Sharing device”. That’s it, you can browse in your PC.

Happy surfing :)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

but with the bsnl mobile the gprs service is just Rs.199 per month with unlimited download
see the following link
http://www.bsnl.co.in/service/tariff_cellone_option_postpaid.htm#gprs

Happy surfing

Anonymous said...

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Aditya Raj said...

I did the same but and I also see the connection sharing active in the task bar but internet is not active. Any idea what might be wrong.

Unknown said...

If you are able browse in your phone. Then the problem is with internet connection sharing. Make sure in the Internet Sharing application, USB is selected for "PC Connection" and "Airtel GPRS" is selected for network connection. After that in the PC make sure your mobile is detected as Internet connection sharing device(network connections tab-> show all connections)

If you are still able to solve - search/post here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/index.php.