Shashikant's tiny world

In a TV commercial of Reliance Netconnect, they position the USB modem as the SIM card of laptop. The ad is unimaginative, but the essence is if you have laptop, you are going to need the data card. I have tried connecting through my phone, but it simply doesn't work.

I am an user of Reliance NetConnect for almost an year. I can't really say a happy user as I would say about their mobile phone service. It merely addresses the need of the hour like sending mails. No heavy downloads and watching YouTube is blasphemy.

We have subscribed to 1 GB plan, which costs Rs 730 per month (inclusive of taxes.) I recently came across plans of Idea Cellular which are much cheaper. That made me think about state of other operators. So, here is the comparison of plans from various operators. The quality of the service/bandwidth may not differ much from one telco to another. So, price seems to be the only decider.

Telco	512 MB/Month	1GB/month	Unlimited	Data Card Price
Airtel	350	599	999	2999
BSNL	-	-	550	2800
Idea	299	399	849	2490
Reliance	-	650	1500	2490
Vodafone	499	699	-	2999
Tata Indicom	500	650	1099	2499

Notes:

• Check tariffs: Idea, Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone, BSNL, Tata Indicom.
  
• Service Taxes and other taxes applicable. Presently, total taxes come to 12.3%.
  
• BSNL service may not be available everywhere.
  
• The bandwidth is generally low. I could top only 300 MB per month when I used it heavily.
  
• BSNL's charges include rental of Rs 150 for voice plan. But, why would use data card for talking?
• I haven't compared the cost of additional bandwidth consumed. It varies from Rs 2/MB to Rs 10/MB. But trust me, it's painfully hard to cross 500MB limit.

Verdict: Idea is the clear winner by wide margin. If you are buying a new connection, the decision is obvious.

Unfortunately, you can't switch the operators once you have bought the device. So, the only hope for existing users is to wait for their service provider to become competitive some day.

I had written to Reliance about the offering from Idea and told them how their service is far more expensive. In reply they sent me a long templatized mail describing the advantages of USB data card and one single line saying they are looking into it. So much for "customer care."

Labels: data card