A look at Reliance WiMAX (Broadnet ) Internet Connection

Been a while since last wrote a review so I’m a bit rusty 🙂

Previously, I depended a lot on the crappy Airtel data card. In course of time things happened, ( which is not relevant to the review 😉 ) and I shifted to a new place. This place had a pre-existing Reliance WiMax connection, so I really cannot comment on the installation charges and support.

So I’m going to focus more on the way it works, speed and support. To begin with: the WiMAX connection isn’t exactly plug and play: once you switch on PoE you’ll have to wait for couple of minutes before you get onto Reliance’s internal network when you can sign in, via their web portal. Which is my first problem - The session sign on is web based. Why is this a problem ? Because I cannot automate the task of logging on. I have to launch the browser, visit the page, enter the username / password and then signon. If it was something like a bridged connection present on tradition DSL based lines then I could easily write a script to do the same.
My second problem is Reliance’s session management: I’ve been  using it in excess of 4 months, and I still can’t figure out when the session gets timed out. There have been times when the session hasn’t expired for more than 24 hours, and yet at times it gets expired in 4 hours - this is really frustrating more so with the way session logon is handled ( ref above).
That said, I’ve had no problems with speed. I was on the 600Kbps( 75KBps) plan then migrated to 1000Kbps (125 KBps)plan, and in both cases the speed has always been very close to the peak speed. Unfortunately, the service is anything close to what the company name is - anything but reliable. I’ve faced less number of downtimes but when its down - its down for atleast a day - in worse cases upto 3 days.
The service and support isn’t too good - whenever I faced downtimes I’d dial the toll free number. It seems that Reliance is very well aware of the issues that plague their service - the first option in the toll free IVRS is to lodge a complaint! After lodging a complaint and providing a contact number you’ll be informed that you’ll be contacted within an hour - but realistically don’t expect a call for 4-6 hours.

Pros: Speeds on par with that mentioned on plan.
Cons: Frequent downtimes, quirky session management which times out at random.
To conclude - I didn’t expect the ‘net to be as good - I’ve always been skeptical of wireless connections in general and Reliance  in specific but I’ve had good experience with this one.

As posted on MouthShut.