There is a lot of buzz about these two newly launched products from Reliance Infocomm and TATA Indicom, both promises speeds of upto 3.1 Mbps, and both claim this is the fastest broadband plan available in the country. And both claim they are better than any of their nearest rivals, so are all these claims true? Obviously as we know about these two brands not everything is true. Lets see how they fare in their promises.
Speed :
Though both claim the speeds of upto 3.1 Mbps, TATA Indicom says the speed at anytime can be shared between upto 20 users basically bringing down the Minimum guaranteed speed to 150 Kbps, as same as the normal CDMA plan. . Also they mention the speed depends on time of day, coverage etc.
Atleast TATA Indicom had the coutrtesy to mention contention ratio but Reliance doesnt even mention the minimum guaranteed speed in their website. Even in their comparision chart they have mentioned average speed as 500 Kbps and have mentioned TATA indicom’s avg speed at 400kbps download.
Coverage :
TATA Indicom has extremely poor coverage and is available in Certain parts of Chennai,Bangalore,Mumbai,Jammu and Kashmir and North east. Call TATA Indicom customer care before opting for this as they havent provided any coverage map.
Reliance fares better in this covering 35 cities and covers most part of the cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmadabad etc. Reliance claims to have 4200 towers capable of Wireless broadband and according to Reliance (yes as per reliance comparision chart) TATA Indicom has 300 photon enabled towers.
So make sure your area is covered before making a jump into wireless broadband.
Truly unlimited ??
Though both these operators have unlimited plans with a price of above Rs.1000 none of them offers true unlimited plans. Both have fair usage policy limiting the usage at 10GB per month. After this 10GB every MB will be charged Rs 2 each. This basically does not allow a high speed connection to its fullest potential. If you stream videos from Youtube or Hulu probably you will fall shortof GB’s within 10 days. So dont go for these connections till both operators make them “truly unlimited”
Pricing :
Both pricings are on similar lines , Reliance’s nationwide (or 35 cities) access with unlimited costs Rs 1750 whereas Tata’s unlimited (5 cities) costs Rs 1050