Bharti Airtel has inked an exclusive partnership to offer its broadband customers two years of free subscription to Encyclopaedia Brittanica online. The subscription, to EB.com and Britannica.com is worth Rs. 6575. The pitch, probably to parents, is for “a growing need for authentic and trusted information sources”, taking a dig at that online resource that we prefer – Wikipedia. EB, though, has “rich multimedia” content, thus meeting Airtel’s requirement for offering its consumers content that will increase utilization of its service.
Our suggestion to K. Srinivas, Joint President, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel, who says that the company is committed to “offer an enhanced broadband experience to our customers, especially to children and the young adults” – it’s one thing to make more services available to existing users, but Airtel still has only 8.4% of the wireline market, compared with BSNL, which has 75.16%. While trying to woo new customers with Encyclopaedia Brittanica, also consider expanding the availability of Airtel’s broadband services to those who want it: Airtel Broadband still doesn’t cover all of the national capital region – doesn’t service my part of Delhi (so I’m stuck with unreliable MTNL), and neither does it entire Bangalore, so @achitnis has to look for another service provider in Bangalore because he is moving to a new home in the same city. Low hanging fruit etc…
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3 Comments until now.
People can enjoy the “rich media content” only if the Fair Use limit is shade higher. 20G limit for 512kbps (Rs 1100 per month) isn’t all that great. They have silently lowered this limit from 100G previously.
Hey i've noticed your jibes against mtnl time and again (almost every opportunity you get) – any specific reason? am not crazy about mtnl but they arent all bad. Just switched recently (been 2 months) from airtel (they never stop robbing the customer) & theres really been no reason for complaint all this while…i mean adsl isn't exactly like fuel cells or anything cutting edge, its quite well tested & error free so whats the heartache?
Pranav: it's not a jibe, it's a complaint. Wait till your connection goes down. I'm typing this while on my Reliance Data card because my MTNL connection is down for the third time today. Try running a content portal on such connectivity, and you'll see what I mean. So the gory details:
During the months of March, April and May, the connection would go off multiple times a day. In April, every day, at 10am, the connection would go down (so I had to eventually change my work timings, to start at 6am), and start working only after 7pm, sometimes not even that. I keep two MTNL connections because it takes them days to fix the problem, and I use the other in case one goes down.
Every time the connection appeared to work, the problem was treated as resolved, only to go down again in a few hours. They did not ask us if the complaint should be considered resolved. So I had to register a complaint every time – sometimes 5-6 in a week. I took 2 weeks for the linesman to come over and try and fix it. They had to come over four – six times, and after repeated requests. There was action only we went to the telephone exchange to complain. Even then, they were clueless for the most bit.
In my opinion, MTNL does not deserve to exist, and it's unfortunate that they have a monopoly in my area. Of course, their level of 'customer service' receives stiff competition from the likes of Sify and Tata Indicom (data card), where I have had an equally terrible experience (worse, in case of Sify, in fact). For me, at one point, the only thing good about MTNL was that it did not go down as often as Sify did. MTNL is great as long as you don't require 'customer service', because it is virtually non-existent. You go from being merely asking for the complaint to be addressed, to requesting, to anger, to fury, to pleading. As a customer, it is demeaning.