I am not sure about Chennai. Below are my experiences with EVDO and Photon + in Coimbatore.
1. BSNL is highly unstable. you need to be as close as possible. coverage at my house which is 3 kms away from evdo coverage is VERY BAD. I am not able to get even 100 KBPS. While I am close to the EVDO tower, I am able to reach till 700 or 750 KBPS. But tarriff is attractive (Rs. 750 unlimited). roaming is not working for me with BSNL. :( 2. I may recommend photon for its stable connection. 1.x MBPS inside City, 600 to 800 KBPS at my house (away from city), 130 KBPS max where CDMA tower is the only option (whereever tata indicom tower is available). Roaming is good. I dint test reliance. But friends say it is also good. but plans are somewhat costlier than photon + (100 to 150 rupees difference). Both photon + and BSNL evdo are well supported by Ubuntu 9.1 (I read in forums like tata supplied 3 types of USB modems in which one is not supported in Linux) Hope it helps. Pandian R --------------------------------------------------- *Free* software is a matter of liberty not price. You should think of "free" as in "free speech". http://blog.grassfield.org On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Raja Subramanian <[email protected]>wrote: > Dear Luggies, > > I'm looking at upgrading from my old Reliance data card for mobile > internet access. I've looked at Tata, Reliance and BSNL, but I'm > unable to separate marketing promises from actual real world > experience. > > > I would like some recommendations luggies who are actual users > of EVDO or other high speed mobile connectivity on their laptops. > > > For my requirement: > 1. 300kbps is more than sufficient, > 2. good coverage inside Chennai city, and to some extent in other metros > 3. fall back to slower GPRS/CDMA speeds if I'm out of coverage areas > 4. offer unlimited data plans for simplified billing > 5. Debian compatible hardware > > > Any advise is much appreciated! > > - Raja > _______________________________________________ > ILUGC Mailing List: > http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc > _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
