Well, if you thought Airtel’s plan to cut speeds by 50% until the end of the month was bad enough, Tata Indicom has harsher penalties for customers who don’t limit the use of their unlimited download connections. According to the terms and conditions put out by Tata Indicom on their broadband website , they have defined the following monthly data transfer threshold (Fair Usage Limit) for various unlimited connections:
Now some would say that a limit of almost 45 GB is a fair amount for a 256 Kbps connection, but we don’t quite agree – if it is an unlimited download connection, this is a workaround for controlling downloads. Operators haven’t provisioned for optimal usage, and perhaps don’t have the capacity that they are selling…well, if they don’t have the capacity, then they shouldn’t be selling it.
What’s worrying is Tata’s approach to users who go beyond these limits. According to the policy:
Data transfer in excess of Fair Usage Limit as per the applicable tariff plan shall be treated as a violation of TCISL FUP. Upon such violation of FUP, TCISL shall contact the Customer suggesting for reduction in usage or upgrade to a higher bandwidth plan.
Despite the above, if the customer fails to upgrade to a high speed plan or continue to violate the TCISL FUP, TCISL reserves the right to suspend or terminate the customer’s account immediately without prejudice to other rights available to TCISL under these Terms and Conditions.
Now is that his affects a small minority of people – there just aren’t enough broadband customers in this country, for any of them to be of any consequence to telecom operators; is it worth the effort or the time for telecom operators or the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to take up broadband issues? Spectrum probably matters more…
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11 Comments until now.
Wow. Seems some kind of cartelisation going on. TRAI should step in. How can there be a limit for unlimited broadband. The Indian telcos seem to have taken inspiration from the US telcos which started putting these limits last year. As it is we get crappy speeds and then this usage limit is unacceptable.
Time for telcos to update wiki on definition of unlimited, and here is the link http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unlimited
I agree its unfair. But the only unfair part is capping it and still calling it unlimited. No one likes to piss off their customers (even a single one). The choice airtel is making here is to go against those 1-2% hoggers in order to accomodate 10-20% more customers (the numbers are just made up).
I think its Airtel's choice if they want to plan their offering in such a fashion but then calling it unlimited is downright misleading and I believe should be illegal as well.
I think its time for telco’s to rename their unlimited plan and pay back their customers for false promises. Most of the product gaps were hidden under their marketing campaigns.
Telco's are devil's child. I can say this as I have been part of it. Some smartass in the organization comes wit these brilliant ideas, his boss buys it & sells it to management.
How can plan be unlimited if it has download limit to it. I use airtel and I'm gonna disconnect it, if they do it. BTW a huge project is in works, which will bring true broadband to this country. Just hope it goes through.
This is totally ridiculous. Its time for a class action lawsuit. Some moneybags law firm should look into this matter. I see lots of money from the deep pockets. Besides, they rarely offer you the speeds they promise anyway – that should be a pretty straight forward lawsuit. Oh I forgot, nothing is straight forward when in comes to consumers, law and India! You'll be dead, right? so why bother…
This seems to be a immature Consumer Oriented Marketing Policy. I am out of adverbs and Adjectives for this. The is a daylight Dacoit-T….
one in every 3 broadband users is a pirate. No. should be morewith unlimited downloaders as there aint much to download on the net that is free.So i feel that users need some immediate introspection before they blame ISP's
THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
World over this policy of operators has been trashed & its about time that the indian online space comes together & condemns it.
We need class-action suits in India. Although it surprises me that under Ratan Tata, the Tata Group has been resorting to some very Reliance-type behavior. Which is good and bad, depending on how you see it.
Some MBA who has taken a 30% cut in his salary may have suggested this to ensure he and is colleagues are not without jobs. In Gujarat, diamond industry workers have started pimping their wives since the industry shut. It could be time before we see the same trend among MBAs. It would take prostitution to some very refined and sophisticated levels.