I’ve been an Airtel broadband user in Jaipur since a long time and loved the consistent speed and service however I’ve always been very vocal against their FUP policy. It is pretty annoying that Airtel gives around 5 GB of data at 2Mbps and then the data speed bottlenecks to 512 Kbps at Rs 699 per month. So I decided to check which is the best broadband service in Jaipur.
Reliance Broadband Review
The most important reason I switched the service provider was to get unlimited data access. I really did not want to loose my sleep on how much data is left in FUP as all my family members were using the same bandwidth and 512 Mbps speed was giving me a lot of headaches. As there are not too many options available in Jaipur for broadband, hence I opted for Reliance wired broadband.
I opted for Thunder 699 plan that gives me unlimited 2Mbps data at approx Rs 800 per month . I had opted for a TP-LINK TL-WR841N 300Mbps Wireless N Router from Amazon. Installation is pretty straight forward as the technician would just get a LAN cable in the house. You need to setup the Router on your own and also need to manage a Login page, which would automatically logout every 24 hours.
The initial tests gave me the promised speed , i.e. way above 2Mbps considering the plan I have opted is 2Mbps only. Here’s the tricky part now, Somehow Reliance Broadband does not like Wifi Routers . It keeps on getting disconnected randomly. Even the Reliance login portal page would not open. A few frantic calls and I realised that the customer support people and the technician do not want to listen to anything post the point they hear that there is a “router” installed and you’re accessing the internet using that. Quite weird, isn’t it. How are you supposed to access the internet on multiple devices using Reliance Broadband ? Only Reliance can tell !
YouTube streaming ( and uploading works like a charm), downloading content through torrent or otherwise is pretty smooth. I’ve used YouTube on 3/4 devices at the same time, did not face any buffering issue at all. A 700 MB movie through torrent can be downloaded in approx 40 minutes on a good day.
I thought changing router may bring good luck so I requested Amazon for a refund and I’m currently using a Netgear WNR614 N300 Wi-Fi Router as I felt there may be some problem with the router as well. Disconnection issue still persists. Infact, you may find same issues being faced by numerous people on various blogs.
Get used to, seeing this screen with Reliance Broadband, often.
Momentary disconnections are still OK, of late I’ve realised the network is down for constantly for 18/24 hours every alternate day. Calling up Customer care and their seniors, complaining on social media and writing to their leadership team does not work with Reliance. The subordinates blatantly lie in front of their supervisors regarding customer visits. In fact their Appellate is just another customer care and escalation on social media is taken after good 10-15 days.
Sadly, if Reliance had invested a bit of their cost in customer happiness their story would’ve been different. Their plans are awesome, they have amazing infrastructure, state of the art technology, funding is no issue as well. Its just the intent which is missing from top to bottom.
My word : Go only in case you have patience with them or there is no other choice of ISP in your area !
Update: After several complaints and escalations Reliance Communications went ahead and permanently disconnected my Internet connection, without any prior notification and claims that I had requested for cancellation and did not speak to the retention team. While I never got a call from them, just few missed call alerts. They quoted their business policy “If we are unable to speak to a customer, we permanently disconnect the connection and that cannot be re-instated no matter what”
Another shock was in store for me when I visited regional head office in Jaipur, I was informed by their Customer service manage Mr. Vishal Sharma, that mince was still ok, in an another case where connections were down snice more than a couple of months, as the Distribution Point was non-functional and customers were not complaining while I was complaining very frequently. On inquiring as to why was the DP was down, he blatantly replied, “Rent and Electricity expenses has not been paid to the house owner for 13 months so he switched off the connection to the DP.” To date reliance has not made any alternate provision of activating the connections that are suffering due to this and also no payments were made to the “culprit”landlord.
