India Broadband

Below is what a sify user experienced
I am about to post this expose in the same structure to Sify Corporation, The Broadband forums in India as well as the Press. I am writing this article as I feel it is necessary for all the people who use broadband in India (also the ones who wish to go for similar services) to be aware of the worthless and awful service that is provided by Sify broadband.
My troubles with Sify started with the day I actually made the decision to go ahead with their service in spite of repeated warnings from friends who wisely chose not to use this atrocious service and those who have suffered as much as me and have switched to other broadband services.
The connection which I was promised within five working days too wasn’t offered within the stipulated time but I didn’t loose my cool then. However, the manner in which it was installed was as sloppy and hopeless as one could ever see. The broadband is actually installed by the wiremen who have no knowledge of either computers or the technology. They seem to rely on “put these numbers in those fields” approach to get to a level of atleast somewhat acceptable incompetence. Since I was using Linux at that point, their presence beyond laying the cables was absolutely useless since they would converse only in their local language which Sify strongly believe is enough to deal with the customers as the local wiremen seem to be the only contact between Sify and their customers which happens “only” at the time of collecting the lease for their ridiculous service.
Amongst the other specifics, the local cable operators or wiremen thought it was compulsory for me to bear the additional cost over the “installation charges” since the installation charges does not include the cost of LAN cables and their labour. They seriously seem to be underpaid for their tardy and rubbish service.
Now it has been over a month and as the local operators come to collect the lease for their service, they also ask for an extra “service charge”. I couldn’t understand the “service” bit ever.
On Friday the 3rd, my connection finally gives up for good and after calling up the customer support (which they strongly object is not to be mistaken as a helpline). I was told the problem would be solved within two (yes 2) hours. Sounds prompt but I get a call only the next evening at 8pm to check if I am connected. I did as I was asked at 10pm just to find out that the dim-witted engineer (or wireman) actually “fixed” the connection by “disconnecting” the LAN cable. For the next three days I call the customer support just to waste half an hour every evening over their helpless support and hear their worthless words to cheer me up like “yes, sir we understand your problem and it would be fixed by tomorrow for sure”, but it takes not more then ten minutes after which they begin to crack-up and start behaving arrogantly with you. Finally after another few minutes of an insignificant confrontation with someone who really doesn’t care (or maybe is just useless for his job sitting at a call center) I finally man
aged to get in touch with one of the seniors at the call center who had atleast the decency to talk respectfully and even called back the next day to checkup on the connection’s status but his attempts to restore my connection too were simply useless after that.
On the fifth day of prepaid disconnection, I had realized that things had really gotten out of hand and I needed to get in touch with the manager. Apparently the manager wasn’t available at the afternoon hour so I asked them to provide me with her email address to which they responded by saying, they were unable to mail me because of “internal problems”. Just out of curiosity I asked them if these internal problems were because they were using their own pathetic internet service at work to which the answer was “no”.
As far as the Sify clients go, they seem to have a serious problem adapting a standard clean interface in MS Windows which too wont install without first installing their substandard anti virus program and as far as the Linux client is concerned, the Daemon (sifyd) has to be killed and restarted every time you need to login to their service. Mind you, the client does not specify if it has logged in successfully, so irrespective to a wrong password, wrong scheme or no connectivity, the client always says it has logged in (or maybe done nothing since there is no confirmation message whatsoever). So if things don’t work… as Sify believes, it’s not their problem either.
Finally, as I end this piece of writing, I would like to remind you people; if Sify believes a week has less than 12 hours… do not argue. Cause that’s how those morons actually function so that you dysfunction and yes, even pay for it with an extra service charge.

EBay owned VoIP software giants Skype has announced the launch of three new toolbars for Web, email, and desktop applications.

This would help Skype users, as they would now be able to directly make VoIP calls from within these applications using the toolbar.

The company has released Skype Toolbar for Microsoft Office, Skype Toolbar for Outlook Express and Skype Toolbar for Thunderbird.

They also have now updated Skype Toolbar for Internet Explorer, and Skype Toolbar for Firefox. Skype Toolbar for Outlook has been upgraded as well.

Checkout: Skype Web Toolbar | Skype Email Toolbar | Skype Office Toolbar

Open source fans now have more than just the beta of Mozilla Firefox 2 browser. Mozilla has now released the first alpha of their upcoming update to their email client Mozilla Thunderbird.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 Alpha 1 is now available for download and it is available on the Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms.

The open source foundation has said that this release is suitable for developers and beta testers only and regular users should stay away from it.

Mozilla stated on their website: “[It] is being made available for testing purposes only. Current users of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.x should not use Thunderbird 2 Alpha 1.”

As per their roadmap for this application, Mozilla is due to release a beta version sometime next month. The release of the final edition of Thunderbird 2 is scheduled for the end of the year.

Mozilla said that they have added features like message tagging, enhanced mail notification alerts, updates to the program’s extension model, and a “Conversations” view mode in this update.

Checkout: Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Alpha 1

eBay owned makers of VoIP application Skype has announced the availability of the latest beta of their Skype for the Mac OS platform.

This new update comes with a revamped interface and other enhancements.

Skype said in a statement that the Skype for Mac OS X 1.5 has been redesigned and it is now better integrated with Mac’s built-in address book as well as Microsoft Entourage, which is shipped with the Mac version of the MS Office productivity suite.

There are more improvements in this update, which includes a resizable chat window, and support for additional languages. It supports both the older generation PowerPC based Macs and the recently launched Intel processor powered Macs.

The beta is available as a free download from Skype website.

Google has released a test version of their popular instant messaging application Google Talk and this update is pretty feature rich.

The application now supports file transfer. However, this requires both the parties to be using the test version of the application to transfer files.

The application also shows preview of images which are being transferred. The images sent through Google Talk are stored in a folder named ‘Google Talk Received Images’ in My Pictures while the files are stored in a folder named ‘Google Talk Received Files’ in My Documents.

This update also brings support for music status. The application would now display what the user is listening to on Google Talk. It supports Winamp, Windows Media Player. Apple iTunes support is said to be somewhat buggy right now.

Google Talk is most popularly known as a lightweight VoIP client. The company has now added Voice Messaging facility to Google Talk.

Checkout: Google Talk 1.0.0.95

Security application developers Symantec have released several patches for their enterprise-facing BrightMail AntiSpam product.

These patches fix several reported security vulnerabilities in this application. The company had warned in an advisory that the bugs could lead to data manipulation, denial-of-service attacks or the exposure of sensitive information.

The affected products include Symantec BrightMail AntiSpam 4.x through 6.x and they are recommending the customers to update to the latest versions.

The company added that the problem occurs because the anti-spam software fails to fully sanitize file names passed to the DATABLOB-GET / DATABLOB-SAVE requests of directory traversal sequences.

With Microsoft announcing that they are ending support for their legacy operating system products including Windows 98 and Windows ME, Xandros has increased their efforts to get more customers to their Linux based product offerings.

The company is now offering a 50 percent rebate on its Desktop Home and Home Edition Premium editions of its Linux operating system. Xandros says that this is to capture the “50 million disenfranchised Windows” users.

Their regular Home edition sells for $39.99, and the premium edition sells for $79.99. However, if the prospective customer is moving from Windows 98, 98SE or ME to Xandros 4.0 the company would give them a 50% rebate on these prices.

The company said in a statement on this new promotional offer: “After upgrading to Xandros, users will continue to have full read and write access to all documents, music, and other files that reside within their original Windows installation and users can choose to install and continue to use Microsoft Office and other popular Windows programs.”

Indian corporate giants ITC Ltd. has announced their plans to invest up to Rs 15,000 crore in the next few years to expand its business.

Most of these investments would go into further boosting their e-choupal (Internet kiosk) network.

ITC Chairman, Y C Deveshwar was speaking at the company’s AGM adding when he revealed that the company plans to invest around Rs 14,000-15,000 crore on enhancing ITC’s economic contribution.

He also added that the company’s value addition had grown at a compound annual rate of more than 12 per cent to over Rs 68,000 crore in the past decade.

The company is planning to invest in e-choupal network to more than 6,000 installations covering one-lakh villages and 3.5 million farmers. Deveshwar said: “The rural retailing initiative will be scaled up by another 40 Choupal-Saagars in 12-18 months.”

Air Deccan is the leaders in the budget airline market in India and they are now due to announce some new flights next month to further boost their presence in the Indian market.

The company confirmed that they would be launching five new flights from next month in different sectors.

These new flights would include flights on the routes: Delhi-Dehradun, Bangalore-Pune and Jammu-Srinagar.

The company added that they would launch new flights on these routes: Hyderabad-Cochin via Coimbatore and Chennai-Rajhamundry via Vijayawada.

There is more good news for the customers as the company is aiming at offering introductory fares of Rs 599 for the Delhi-Dehradun sector; Rs 499 on the Jammu-Srinagar route; Rs 999 on the Bangalore-Pune route and Rs 1224 on the Chennai-Rajahmundry and Hyderabad-Cochin sectors.

Indian corporate giants Tata have a presence in the telecom sector in the domestic market and they are now urging the telecom industry to give a commitment to the Government that it would complete 100 per cent address verification of the subscriber base.

This comes after the recent Mumbai bomb blast. Tata Teleservices delivered a letter to various telecom bodies and companies saying: “Industry has no choice except to commit to the Government that it will do everything necessary to complete 100 per cent address verification for the subscriber base, pre-paid and postpaid.”

However, this is not a view shared by other telecom players in the country who say that it would be way too expensive and complicated to achieve. Tata Group had in the past asked the telecom operators in the country to come out with a feasible solution to iron out differences on subscriber identification.

No matter how many rules the Indian government has setup for the telecom players; it has been relatively easier for the consumer in the Indian market to get a mobile connection. They just need some documents that can easily be forged and few companies take the pain to manually verify the addresses of the subscribers.