Well here are the specs and packages for their data connection Airtel provided:

Package Details:

Limited: 1 GB for Rs.300 + Tax
3 GB for Rs.600 + Tax

Unlimited: for Rs.1499 + Tax

Tax rates:

VAT (Value Added Tax) = 16.67%
MSL (Mobile Subscriber Levy) = 11.11%
ECL (Environmental Subscriber Levy) = 2%
Total: 29.78%

Do they offer promised speed?

This a question that there is no direct answer, for the unlimited package they said they offer 3.2mbps (409.6KB/s) As far as I know, people experience around 100 – 250Kb/s!

Is there any limits like Fair User Policy?
No, Its 100% unlimited

I Purchased the Unlimited Package, and the much hyped First month the connectivity was ok, connecting around 320 KB/s , but from february 2009, the culprit shows its real face. the connection is as low as 13 KB/s (yeah i understand as slow as the dialup connections in old days). i called their customer care service and the only reply i got from them is this :

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience caused sir, but we are doing some upgrade process these days, and it will be fixed very soon”

Poor me, believed them, and until this moment I’m writing this post, the connection wasn’t  fixed. i have called them with patience several times, and all the times I’ve got various responses from the customer care agents who had very less knowledge on the technology, which is irrelevant to the issue, and one of them were not at all caring what the customers problem was. most of the time the agents said their superior will call me back on the next morning, and non of the called me, and whatever the complaint numbers they give me is closed by them without resolution each time, whenever i call and ask about the complaint number. the above quoted text is the answer. one of them mentioned that the entire Internet is only 1MB/s and their connectivity is 3.2 MB/s . and the Internet is slow because its slower than their connectivity!?? . i hope non of you techies and geeks will agree with this (yeah can see some of you laugh ROFL) .

One Airtel agent mentioned that their ISP’s are full and needs time to upgrade, yeah its understandable, but is that a problem for a consumer who still pays the full amount for the service? we can bare with this for a week or two, but more than a month, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? . they should have planned well and done these to handle the amount of users, now their are doing their maintenance with the cost of many users money, and time.

Another thing i found with them is that a single connection through Internet download Manager was connecting around 13-20 KB/s , even to download a 10 MB file i had to wait more than 20 minutes, and also if i tried a concurrent download of 10 files at the same time, and each file was downloading in that speed, consuming a total bandwidth of 1MB or more. and non of the agents were able to explain me why is this happening.

And frustrated me, sent an email about this problem to 555@airtel.lk which is their customer care email, and is said that it will be responding within few days, responded after 14 days i sent the email, with the following reply. see how responsible Airtel is about their customer problems.

Yeah they sent an email on 23rd of April saying that the issue will be resolved on  17th of April 2009, as per to my knowledge 17th comes before 23rd not after right?, correct me if I’m wrong guys ROFL.  and when i just called them and asked about this, guess what again the reply was the above quoted text, and a silence (poor agents I’m sure its not their faults, but they are the person we can communicate to Airtel right), and again the issue was never solved!?.

I think if Airtel is willing to maintain the hype it made when it launched in Sri Lanka, and the Reputation of Airtel Organization, it needs to consider about waiving off the monthly charge they charged for the month cycles March, and April from their data package customers, Isn’t it unfair to charge the customer for their mistakes, and for a service which didn’t serve its promise???

Friends in Sri Lanka, think twice before you select this Data connection, it might look like wonder when you start using it initially, but its NOT!!!!. its just an ILLUSION. I’m just posting this because i don’t want any of you guys to waste your valuable time, and money with a bad service which i experienced.

I think i would rather upgrade my DSL line with the SLT, rather than wasting my time with Airtel Anymore. even though DSL was slower than 3.2 MB/s, it never failed its promised bandwidth!!.

And my Final verdict:

Airtel HSDPA Data Connection = a Fake Promise

P.S : oh yeahh i just found that they’ve (Airtel)  removed the data connection details from their website.

Well I just received this nice and funny email  from a friend of mine this morning. I find it pretty interesting. just wanted to share this.

MY Dear ON-LINE FRIENDS,

I want to thank all my friends and other unknown people who have forwarded chain letters to me in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 & YOU because of your kindness.

I stopped drinking Coca-Cola after I found out that it’s good only for removing toilet stains.

I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS.

I stopped using my ATM card because I am afraid that someone might have installed a small device on the ATM machine that will stole my ATM card number and my pin number when typing it.

I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer.

I don’t leave my car in the parking lot or any other place and sometimes I even have to walk about 7 blocks for fear that someone will drug me with a perfume sample and try to rob me.

I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a phone bill from hell with calls to Uganda, Singapore and Tokyo.

I also stopped drinking anything out of a can for fear that I will get sick from the rat faeces and urine.

When I go to parties, I don’t look at any girl, no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me, then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times. (Poor girl! she’s been 7 since 1993…)

I went bankrupt from bounced checks that I made, expecting the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL were supposed to send me (when I participated in their special-mail program) would arrive soon.

My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland.

Still open to help someone from Bulgaria who wants to use my account to transfer his uncle’s property of some hundred millions $.

Made some Hundred wishes before forwarding those Dalai Lama, most of those "Wishes" are already married (to someone else)

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not send this e-mail to at least 913760 people in the next 10 seconds, a bird will sh*t on your head today at 04.00 p.m.

Now give me a break !!!

Now who ever wrote this originally..I must say.. way to go dude!!!

its been a long time since my last post on this blog. end of 2007 and first month of 2008 made me so busy with family functions and work. anyway I’m back!. i will be starting my postings from today.

And I would like to inform you all that, now I have a blog on ASP.NET Web blogs.thanks to Joe Stagner who set me up with this blog as he mentioned in one of his recent post in his blog here. I’m so glad that I’m able to blog with geeks like joe, and Scottgu . I just got my hands on the control panel of the blog and I’m playing around with it for a while to get used to all functionality it has.

I’ll be using that blog to post my articles on ASP.Net and web related articles.and this blog will be concentrating mostly on C#, .Net Framework and Software Architectures.

happy blogging guys!.