Vodafone OFC [PIC]

As seen in Kalyani, West Bengal

Reliance Jio OFC (RJIL OFC) [PIC]

As seen at Barrackpore, near my home.

A Brief Intro to Airtel Platinum 3G

Airtel, country's largest mobile operator has launched 'PLATINUM 3G' services in Kolkata on April 9, 2015. That's third 3G900 commercial launch in India after Airtel did in Mumbai (March 13, 2015) and Idea did in Delhi (March 24, 2015).

Airtel Platinum 3G - Homepage

Alliance Broadband - Useful Stuffs

Alliance Broadband is the best broadband service provider in the metro area of Kolkata. Being the best one for home broadband segment, it offers unlimited usage on most plans, with night speed upgrade and peering for download boost. It has fewer downtime compared to BSNL.

In this post I am sharing few useful info for Alliance Broadband.

Log in page

#1 : http://10.254.254.11/0/up/ [not working]
#2 : http://10.254.254.15/0/up/  [working at Barrackpore]
#3 : http://10.254.254.19/0/up/  [working at Paikpara/Belgachia]
#4 : http://10.254.254.60/0/up/  [working at Khardah]


New Logo of Alliance Broadband
seen in September 2018

If you check your IP address while on Alliance BB connection, the ISP may not be shown as Alliance, rather I found it has several alias like Tamanna Communication Pvt, G C Link Pvt, Premier Broadband Services, Baishakhi Special, Asia Pacific Network Information Center, Golden Touch International, Sristi Sanchar Webnet.

If you go deeper, hostname could be found as Alliance Broadband. 

This post is maintained mainly for my personal interests.

O-zone WiFi : Aims to Reach Indians with WiFi

Delhi headquater-ed Ozone WiFi is an ISP of India with ISP cat A license. Ozone was founded by Sanjeev Bobby Sarin in 2007. Unlike other ISPs, Ozone is unique in a way that it offers internet services over WiFi. Anybody who have WiFi enabled devices can access internet over Ozone WiFi. Presently Ozone is the largest public WiFi service provider in the country.

In April 2011, Ozone was in talks with several mobile operators - Vodafone, Airtel, Aircel and Idea for data offload to its WiFi network. The deal did not happen.

In January 2012, Google partnered with Ozone to promote Google+. When a person is on Ozone Wifi he would have free unlimited access on Google+ and access to Youtube (specific videos free for 10 min/day). The deal worked for 90 days.

Data Focused MTS India to Loose Battle on Smartphone Field

In a very interesting move Russian Govt & Sistema promoted MTS India, country's sole CDMA based mobile voice & data service provider has decided to stay away from upcoming spectrum auction citing the reason of too high baseprice of 800 MHz airwave. 

Globally most popular LTE bands are 1800 & 800 Mhz. In Europe GSM is predominant over CDMA, it makes LTE-FDD roll out favorable on mostly vacant 800 Mhz band. There, in general mostly used bands are 900Mhz for 2G and 2100Mhz for 3G. As there are fewer operators (MNO) and less population there, their requirements did not expanded much to 1800Mhz, the vacant 1800Mhz band is also used for LTE FDD roll out. 

In India situation is different - hence govt. sold 2300Mhz band for broadband wireless access, which is again unpaired - suitable for LTE TDD. Globally LTE-TD is gaining traction in countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. And in some countries operators are deploying LTE-TD as an enhancement to existing LTE-FDD networks. 

In India GSM players, more specifically incumbents are looking for 800Mhz band as E-GSM spectrum. The reason is simple: They can put pressure on CDMA operators with less spectrum for CDMA or future LTE deployment , as well as can deploy LTE-FDD on 800Mhz which can offer wide coverage compared to LTE1800 & LTE2300. Indian players with unified 1800Mhz band are planning for LTE-FDD roll out; the list includes Vodafone, Idea, Videocon and Uninor. State owned players BSNL & MTNL, wallowed by the poor finances want to skip the 4G party. 

Now let's back to MTS India. Being jolted by 3G players MTS who always talks about data, had rolled out its Rev B phase II network, branded as 3GPLUS or MBlaze Ultra. With good promotion of its WiFi Hotspots It makes good customer base on data front, even taps GSM smartphone & WiFi tablet users. To promote their Wifi products they've started campaigning with a catchy name 'HomeSpot' to reach even home users - to compete against wired home brodband service providers.

But MTS misses one spot in the data business - smartphones. Unlike Reliance & TATA Docomo, they never launch good specs, popular brands and open CDMA smartphones which sports latest Android version. They have their own smartphone series - MTag and Blaze series, these are mostly by Chinese OEMs like Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad or rebranded Micromax, Lava. Specification wise these phones are not at par with HTC, Motorola, Nokia or Samsung. MTS even is not allowing MEID registration on foreign imported smartphones - that's so disappointing! At the same time Reliance & Tata Docomo allows and Reliance has more loyal CDMA users. 

Issues with MTS Smartphone Strategy

1. Made by Chinese OEMs or rebranded 
2. Hardware is not upto the mark
3. Android version is old, the UI is not good enough.
4. No chance of getting Android updates in future.
5. Poor battery life, partly due to Andoid OS, partly due to poor R&D smartphones.
6. The CDMA ruim slot is locked with MTS
7. You can't be part of 3rd party development because of non popular Android phones.
8. Operating system choice is only one - Android. MTS has no Windows phone in its sleeve.
9. They don't allow MEID registration on imported non-sim smartphones. 
10. The regular data plans are in line of Airtel & Vodafone. Reliance & Tata has cheaper CDMA data plans for smartphone users (less than Rs 100 for 1GB data). On 3G Reliance, Tata, Aircel and Idea (in few circles) are offering more pocket friendly plans. 
11. They don't endorse open market smartphones from HTC or even ZTE. While both Reliance & Tata are offering these. 

One thing is for sure MTS is underestimating Indian customers. They thought if pricing barrier of smartphones can be broken, they can be a part of data evolution in the country in a true way.