Okay, we are going to write this article out of our personal experience. Why so? Because we have hands on experience with at least 5 providers of broadband in Kolkata and trust us, no matter how much they brag about their services, most of the providers will eventually almost make you beg for at least a decent service.
Can you guess which service provider will top the list of worst broadband providers? Guess, guess… come on, give it a try… Okay fine! We will stop playing and get to business.
Best Broadband in Kolkata Price Speed and Review
Before we start, we will use a reverse order in which we will list the worst service providers on top and gradually narrow down on the best provider. This analysis will be based on the following parameters:
- Downtimes.
- Price
- Fault servicing.
- The attitude of customer service reps.
Here is our bottom-to-top approach in identifying the providers you really need to avoid when in Kolkata:
5. BSNL – Avoid at all costs.
We are sorry to break it but yes, BSNL is Kolkata’s worst broadband service provider. If we are to rate this provider on a scale of 1 to 5, we will rather ask for an extra option – “Is there a negative rating option?”
Why so? Here are the reasons:
- Highest price among all service providers for the same bandwidth.
- Long downtimes. If the service goes down, you are doomed. You need to make at least 5 calls to get it fixed and there will endless docket creations, the foul language used on your part (because you will eventually get so angry that you cannot prevent yourself from verbally abusing those people who pick up your service request calls).
- Fault services are terrible. They will take at least 7 days to get in action and then they will frequently keep knocking on your door, checking phone connection once, then asking you whether your computer operating system is faulty or not, and then they will blame your computer hardware and final when they exhaust all options of putting the blame on you, they will say, ‘okay, we are escalating this’ but in reality, it may be a simple case of broken wire somewhere at a distance which can be fixed in less than an hour’s time.
- The customer care reps have apathetic attitudes. They will treat you like untouchables and as if they will do a great favor to you by just allowing you to lick their feet.
Airtel Broadband – You will hate the pricing
Okay, we will say that Airtel broadband is fast and reliable but… and yes a BIG BUT… they are expensive. In fact, they are twice as much expensive as the ones that we are going, to sum up next. To make things worse, Airtel has this fair usage policy in place which tags its plans with what is known as data download quota.
For example, you will get a plan which will cost you INR 699 and will allow 2Mbps or at the most 4Mbps of speed for the first 5 gigs of data and then you will be thrown back to 512Kbps. The first 5 gigs of data are the FUP quota. Downtime? Of course, you will get downtimes but not as much as Docomo. They will fix the problem quickly and customer reps are decent people.
Meghbala Broadband – Very unreliable
Though cheaper than Tata Docomo and Airtel Broadband, Meghbala is known for being very unreliable with frequent outages. It is still expensive compared to competitors like Tikona and Alliance. Again there are some packages which are way more expensive that even BSNL for the same bandwidth.
They fix faults fairly quickly but do you really want to work with something that goes down every alternate day?
Tikona – Cheapest but problematic
Tikona broadband has been trying to get its foothold in Kolkata’s market for quite some time now. The only problem is that they are completely wireless and out of our personal experience we know that if you are not living in a high-rise apartment, you not getting any service near the ground.
They literally asked us to get a long bamboo and hung their machine on top of it and sent it as high as possible in attempts to get a signal. However, if you are living high enough, Tikona will literally give you a steady connection. Downtimes won’t really bother you much but expect a few every once in a while. Customer service is moderately good.
We call it Ground Zero for broadband connection – Alliance Broadband
Best of the lot! We have been using this service provider for 4 years now and we don’t have enough words of praise for them.
On a scale of 1 to 5, here are our ratings for this broadband service provider:
- Reliability – 4.8 out of 5.
- Fault Repair – 5 out of 5.
- Customer Service – 5 out of 5.
- Pricing – 5 out of 5.
Why so generous with pricing when we already said that Tikona is the cheapest alternative? That’s because only Alliance provides Happy Hours that no other provider has. The type of speed they offer during the happy hours is more than enough to compensate for the slightly (we literally mean hardly 100 bucks of difference) higher price compared to Tikona Broadband.
They have 24/7 customer service for troubleshooting network issues. Their customer care reps have actually set very high standards. We have never seen a product with any FUP quota restrictions (and that’s probably because their prices are low enough to target unlimited bandwidth plans). Their Fault Repair service is awesome. They don’t really provide this on their own but rather put local cable distributors in charge of this services. Every time there is a problem with wires or some kind of hardware issue, it has always been fixed on the same day within a matter of few hours.
Now that we have talked so much in appreciation, let us take a look at the most popular plans of Alliance Broadband (and we’ll like to say that their connections are extremely reliable):
| STARTER PLUS | 512 Kbps | Not Applicable | Unlimited | 3 Mbps | INR 399 |
| ZOOM PLUS | 640 Kbps | Not Applicable | Unlimited | 5 Mbps | INR 499 |
| PRIME | 700 Kbps | 2 Mbps | Unlimited | 20 Mbps | INR 550 |
| EXECUTIVE PLUS | 800 Kbps | 3 Mbps | Unlimited | 20 Mbps | INR 699 |
| PREFERRED | 1 Mbps | 4 Mbps | Unlimited | 25 Mbps | INR 750 |
| PREMIUM | 1.5 Mbps | 6 Mbps | Unlimited | 35 Mbps | INR 1050 |
| SPEED | 2 Mbps | 8 Mbps | Unlimited | 35 Mbps | INR 1399 |
| FLASH | 3 Mbps | 10 Mbps | Unlimited | 45 Mbps | INR 2499 |